


Gulfport: A British Petroleum Fanfic (Part One)

by hw_campbell_jr



Series: Gulfport: A British Petroleum Fanfic [1]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Andy Warhol - Freeform, Angst, Existentialism, Hipsters, Judy Blume - Freeform, M/M, Nostalgia, Original Character(s), Passive-aggression, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Psychological Drama, Psychological Trauma, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Reality TV, Romance, Rough Sex, Woody Allen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:52:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 105,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hw_campbell_jr/pseuds/hw_campbell_jr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This, I intended as the novel that Lestat writes some ten years after Blood Canticle. Subject to revision, probably.</p><p>It is set in Mobile, Alabama, in 2010 against the backdrop of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Lestat & Louis attempt an "adult" relationship by having couples therapy & Lestat attempts being a Serious Writer of Serious Novels, to some effect (he also plays in a covers band). But really it is about power, of multiple kinds. For example, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut Jnr., capitalism is present in this story about insecure, wealthy, white men in much the same manner that honey might be present in a story about bees.</p><p>To wit, with regard to that: “it is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity.” (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus). And that is what happens in this story, in between all the expansive long-take nothing, constant hipsterism and the periodic sexing and angsting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

Last novel by immortal author suggests life’s work still ahead. 

By Laurence Roquentin

 _Blood Canticle_ is, according to the author, the last book he will ever write. Aficionados of M. de Lioncourt’s bombastic works will no doubt recall that he’s made this promise before – “let me now pass from fiction into legend,” he wrote, in the concluding lines of _Memnoch, The Devil_ (that is, if my memory does not fail me entirely). It hasn’t happened, of course, and this reviewer sincerely doubts that it ever will.

This time, however, it is God rather than The Devil who has possessed Lestat to pick up the pen. Now living on a farm with his toy-boy vampire boyfriend and a teenaged vampire witch, he embarks on a quest for missing supernatural creatures and personal Sainthood. He fails at one quest, and succeeds at the other, and any previous experience with the author will likely reveal which is which before the first page is read. Suffice to say, de Lioncourt is still the hero of his own life.

As a storyteller, M. de Lioncourt tends to make heroes out of monsters. As such he is part of a modern trend, and an interesting one, insofar as it requires an audience to contemplate the traits and actions they posit as monstrous. However, as a main character Lestat’s real villainy has always been personal rather than supernatural. The fact that he is a common murder is, given the context of gothic fiction, secondary to the fact that he really is rather a horrible person, something his narratives reveal but his prose continually elides. To give M. de Lioncourt his due, his works often contain the suggestion that his protagonist is not entirely to be trusted, though in the past I have felt this thread to be under-developed. In very basic terms, as a narrator-character, Lestat’s sincere belief in his own significance confuses any authorial message about unpleasantness in the character’s actions. He’s a very sympathetic fiend, and he knows it.

Yet _Blood Canticle_ ’s particular stylization - stream of consciousness recollection, abrupt transition, film language, even a certain amount of vaguely Derridian formalism (random capitalization particularly), enthusiastic description in a manner far more Kerouac than D.H. Lawrence - emphasizes the fallibility of de Lioncourt’s narrator. These stylistic affectations appear the diary-tools of bitter, repentant, and distinctly un-heroic monster who lacks the self-awareness to be satisfied with nothingness. What is Lestat going to do with the rest of his un-life, one wonders, and the answer is a rather tragic Nothing Much. The story is pleasingly Dickensian in this way - something of which I imagine M. de Lioncourt is well aware, since I stopped counting around the fifth time Charles Dickens was mentioned by name in the text.

 _Blood Canticle_ is not a great novel, but it does represent a development from the author’s previous works, and as such, it is profoundly curious text for one who has been following de Lioncourt’s writing career (as I must acknowledge I have). M. de Lioncourt has always drawn on American literary traditions - detective fiction especially - and his recent borrowing from the experimental canon works in his favor. Or actually, it hasn’t yet (on the whole, the book requires a substantial edit, stream of consciousness technique aside) but I sincerely believe that given enough time, it might. Besides, if he really is the immortal he claims to be, he has plenty of time to improve his practice.  
(Press-Register, Mobile AL, 2003)

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Louis,

By now you will have read my copious attachments, but I’ve come up with literally the perfect introduction. I wrote a much longer one, but it was awful.

HERE:

Darlings,

Enjoy your slashfic.

Fuck you,

Lestat de Lioncourt, Mobile, AL, 2011.

/

Literary genius. Well, you knew that, but can you stand it?  
xx.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Lestat,

I will assume this is sarcasm.

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

My dearest antagonist,

So you don’t like it. Color me profoundly surprised. Though would you mind being the tiniest bit more specific?

Fondest regards,  
De baisers,  
Lestat

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Are you are actually asking me for editing advice?

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

YES LOUIS I AM ACTUALLY ASKING YOU FOR EDITING ADVICE.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

In general it’s bad practice to invite your reader to “fuck you.”

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

It is “gritty” though. I feel it implies a general detachment. You like existential despair, don’t you? I thought that was your “thing”.

x.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

I understand the implied reference to the literary tradition of autobiographical direct address, and some of your experimentation with style is valuable in this effort – slang terms do add to that impression, particularly as they accurately convey the extent to which you employ them “In Real Life”. As this may be of interest to you, the most effective example of this technique I have seen is Harold Norse’s set of translations of the Roman Sonnets of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli. I do recommend tracking that down, particularly if you can find a copy that contains the original poems also.

However, as Norse (and Belli) illuminate, vulgarity is not a point in itself, and you cannot use an affected bitter informality as a substitute for genuineness. In fact, it seems rather disingenuous to approach things in this way when the book itself is actually quite good, and also quite well considered. That consideration is a notable difference, incidentally. I suspect you have given the work some actual thought.

So: in general, I am somewhat in favor of your use of immediacy here, but not of all of the techniques you’ve employed to imply it. For example, I sincerely doubt that the “written off the cuff” impression here is reflective of the truth, and as such I’m given to wonder why you don’t interrogate the process you actually went through while writing this novel. That would be interesting.

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Did you just write that my book was quite good?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Of course, that’s the part of my communication you bothered to read. How little has changed.

But yes, for your edification, that’s what I wrote. There are notes I could make but I think you should feel confident about the writing in general.

I will further concede that the insufferableness of the proposed introduction does add something to the “unreliable narrator” impression you manage to give at points of the book proper. This has been one of the stronger elements of your work to date, and I feel you’re developing it to a much subtler effect here. The introduction should reflect this. It’s quite a deceptively banal novel, in some senses, which undercuts some of your characteristic bombasticness.

Upon reflection, the completist in me supposes that it is worthwhile to explicitly reference the self-involvement of your previous novels, so perhaps you should temper my comments on the introduction with that revelation. Though whether this drives you to extend it or remove it altogether I don’t know.

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Oh mon petit, I’m such a sucker for your passive-aggressive, back-handed compliments. Email is really the perfect medium for you – in the absence of tone, it’s even more difficult to decipher your loaded mixed messages than it is when you’re speaking, elevating your merely being a prick to the level of conceptual art.

How I miss you, Louis. I could never loathe myself to the same extent without you.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Perhaps it’s better that you don’t write to me.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Louis,

All fencing aside I feel I should ask you because the book is about you. It’s an uncharacteristic kindness on my part. Enjoy it while it lasts. You don’t have power of veto, but I will promise to consider your feelings. Isn’t that gracious of me?

And just FYI, but I’m also using that horrible review you wrote of my last book as a pre-pendix of sorts, though you can’t complain about that since it’s public domain. Your reviewer pseudonym is nearly as pretentious as your email address, by the way, but I’ll forgive you for that because you don’t have a lot else going on.

Je t’embrasse très fort,  
Lestat.

PS: What should I call it?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

“Gulfport.”

No further corrections. And no further emails. I do actually mean that. I’m uncomfortable with this entire exchange. And I apologize for the review. I stand by it, of course, but it is rather bitter, more so than you deserved. The events of 2001 had some impact there, I suspect.

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Can I come over?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Works of Staggering Brilliance (Introduction).

Lestat,

Let me think on it.

Louis.


	2. Constant, Degenerate Fucking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's actually more discussion of the act than there is doing it. Nevertheless, here is where Lestat begins his novel in earnest. There's even an epigraph!

**GULFPORT**

****_A British Petroleum fanfic by Lestat de Lioncourt._ ** **

 

“And why should I bother to tell of the times he came to me in wretched anxiety, begging me never to leave him, of the times we walked together and talked together, acted Shakespeare together for Claudia's amusement, or went arm in arm to hunt the riverfront taverns or to waltz with the dark-skinned beauties of the celebrated quadroon balls? Read between the lines.” (Lestat de Lioncourt on Louis de Pointe du Lac, from The Vampire Lestat)

 

"She lost her virginity a while ago. And I should know."(Justin Timberlake on Britney Spears, to Barbara Walters on 20/20)

 

Constant, Degenerate Fucking. 

This is what I would have said.

It’s not what I said, you understand. Not precisely. But it is close. It’s important that you understand that. It’s close. Or, close enough for you to follow what happened.

It’s what I would have said, you know? And if you know that phrase, if you’ve heard it or you’ve used it before, then you’ll know it has a dual meaning, like most of the words that matter to us. I am, to a certain extent, concerned about truth-telling. I’ve begun to feel it’s important. Actually, I always thought it was important.

And yes, the last book was sweeping and grand and some of you complained rather loudly about that, but you’ll be happy to know that this one isn’t about anything. I’ve Learned My Lesson. And you won. I won’t write pronouncements anymore. This story is about only two things: a messy sexual relationship, and occasionally the Deepwater Horizon disaster, for reasons which will become clear. But that’s it. Rather restrained, wouldn’t you agree?

So this is it. This is about sex. A little bit of (oh lord) “social commentary” but mostly just messy sex and everything I would have said about it at the time. This is, shall we say, a document of what I would have said about having a lover, or trying to have a lover, or just trying to do “lovers” in a way that could actually be done sustainably while also being a 200-and-some-change-year-old vampire with just so many problems and an irritating tendency to design or conduct my actions with thought to writing about them later. And also the Deepwater Horizon disaster, as I have indicated, though you needn’t be concerned with that now. For now, become acquainted with the notions of performance, and of constancy. Curtain up.

“How is it that we’re having all of the sex all of the time?” is what I would have said, collapsing, breathless, when we had just figured it out and we really were having it, doing it, all of the time. I would have said it while his blood was smeared across my face and body, matting my hair, staining the sheets. Louis, though, wouldn’t have said anything. He never says anything in circumstances like these. Instead, he lay on his back, one hand under his head and the other delicately curled against his naked thigh. He seemed amused, maybe even charmed by me, but he was silent, his green eyes half-lidded and his skin aglow.

So I would have said this too, while throwing my arm over him: “I feel we are now using the sex allowance of some other couple,” I would have said, and it would have been a joke, and I would have said it in a dry, knowing voice, articulate with and edge of cruelty, because I was in love with him, with Louis, and I wanted to make him laugh, because he was very beautiful when he did that.

 

“Bobby and Buffy Jenkins of Backwater, Missouri,” I would have continued, “have just found themselves unable to maintain a satisfactory erection because we haven’t stopped fucking.” Actually, I think I did. I’m certain that’s actually what I did say. Yeah, I’m going to say “fucking” a lot. It’s that kind of story. Anyway, “it’s not natural, this amount of sex,” I said. “I swear we’ve gone over quota.”

Louis didn’t say anything then either, though he did smile and move his hand a little, rubbing it against my leg. Then, silent and composed, he closed his eyes. His whole body was like a graceful accident, sprawled against the bed as he was. Its appeal was, even now, even after hours upon hours of this dislocated sexual madness, unwavering.

“Some two hundred years of sexual frustration,” I said, sighing, putting my head against his shoulder and pulling him closer. “Oh mon cher, I don’t know. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask any questions. Perhaps I’ll break the spell. Why aren’t you saying anything? Are you alright?”  
His eyes opened and he turned a little to look at me. “Yes. Though I’m tired, of course. Given the… ah, unnatural amount of…well.”  
“Fucking,” I finished for him. “You really shouldn’t be doing it if you can’t say it.”

He blushed, but he blushed quickly, as if he knew it was unnecessary. He bit his lip a little to push it away. The gesture was beyond adorable, white teeth against his white lip, a perplexed and inadvertently coquettish expression. “You’re right,” he said, looking at me directly, the flush fading from his cheeks. “Alright, fucking. Fucking it is.” It’s that kind of story for him too.

I grinned. For reasons unknown, it meant something to me that he acknowledged it, that between us we’d sunk into a degradation so complete and overwhelming that it would have been grotesque had it not been redeemed by our utter seriousness. I was actually starting to get hungry in a genuine way, which meant we had not been out for almost a week, not out of the flat or possibly even out of the bed, except when the dog had insisted on being fed. My fingers were sticky and I desperately needed a shower, but I wasn’t inclined to get up, not if he wasn’t.

“Constant, degenerate fucking,” he repeated, musing almost, as if the word itself were interesting. His fingers were in my hair, moving absently. “This is not,” he concluded, “the sort of thing one calls making love.”  
I couldn’t help but laugh at him. “Nobody says that anymore anyway,” I said, pushing him. He raised an eyebrow, smiling wider now, so that I could just see his fangs.  
“Ah, forgive me my discomfort with fashionable vulgarity. I regret offending your chronic hipsterism.”  
“If you’d only dress better, you’d be king of hipsterdom, mon cher” I said. “You’re more pretentious than anyone I’ve ever met, and this sort of thing just proves it. It’s bad enough that you’re smug, but what makes it so much worse is that you think you’re classy. You probably watch David Lynch films just so you can impress people by knowing about them.”

And there it was. His laugh was gentle and dignified. Gentlemanly. This wasn’t something I’d known about him when we had been living together in the nineteenth century, though I could probably have inferred it. Yet it was so easy to get at it now, this laughter, where once it had been an impossible challenge, and this redeemed a multitude of petty sins. I moved away a little, propped myself up on my elbows to look at him, and his smile had become decidedly indulgent, but the laughter meant that I didn’t mind. Because I had him, and I could see that in his face too. He had sucked the blood from my femoral artery with such flair and precision that frankly I felt inclined to let him be patronizing if that was what he wanted to do. He could probably have done anything, and I would have let him. His arm had travelled up and down my back when I’d moved, his laughter not quite stopping, while the fingers of his other hand were knotting with mine as our bodies had knotted in waking.

Since then, of course, they had knotted repeatedly. Repeatedly repeatedly, until nothing existed but this sickening messiness, this intoxicating, decadent horror, this – yes, why not? – this constant degenerate fucking. Of course, as per our intermittent acquaintance, we’d had our deep conversations and our declarations, our stock-standard hand holding and eye gazing, and all of those true confessions and moments of general meaningfulness at which we excelled. Those things had rescued the experience from tawdriness.

But not, I thought, by terribly much. As I felt him move against me, I marveled at the firm, angular nature of a young man’s thighs and felt things tipping in that general direction once more. He was so pleasant to touch even like this, even in passing, but so much more pleasant to feel pressed up against me in soaking embrace as he had been only moments ago. Let me do it to you again, I thought. I’ll never be finished with doing it.

So I began to lick the blood from his face as gently as I could. I’ll die in this bed with you, I told him, in my head, knowing he’d never hear me, curling my fingers against his neck, pressing into his body. He had turned sideways to face me, and I felt him stiffen, noticing his fingers at my waist. With his other hand, he brushed my bloody hair back from my temple and caressed there. But when I kissed his mouth he only laughed again and pushed me away.  
“You’re like a dog!” he said, moving up against the headboard. “I don’t understand how you’re not exhausted.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” I told him. “Come back here and let me do things to you.”  
“What’s the time?”  
“11:30. Early.”  
He tucked his hair behind his ears, making a face. He hadn’t cut it, his hair, possibly because I hadn’t given him the chance, and it was long and thick, settling about his shoulders like heavy smoke.

“Don’t tell me you’re bored,” I rolled onto my back, smiling my most charming smile. It was false. For a second I felt real fear, as if the outside world was near to re-entering our makeshift love-nest, and I wasn’t ready for that, not at all. “I’ll cry,” I said. “I mean it. My ego is that fragile, don’t hurt my feelings.”  
“Oh no, it’s only… I’m certainly… certainly not bored. It’s just that we haven’t been out, and I’m a little… well, I’m not healing as fast as I would expect to.”  
“Oh, are you sore, chéri?”  
“Yes,” he said. He smiled apologetically. “A little. It’s nothing serious.”  
“Show me.”

“Here,” he lifted his arm and showed me his wrist, which hadn’t quite closed where I had bitten him. The wound was clouded with purple bruising, all of which should have healed by now. I sat up next to him and kissed it.  
“Poor thing. You’re hungry. You haven’t got enough in reserve.”  
“And here,” he said, turning to show me his shoulder. I kissed him there too. His eyes closed as I did this. He breathed in. I kissed next to the wound, on his neck and heard him do it again. Such a telling breath, so low it was almost silent, and yet so beautifully expressive. I kissed him a third time, running my hand over his chest, resting it on his stomach, stroking there.  
“Don’t,” he said. “Really.”  
“It’s that easy?” I asked him. “A few love bites and you’re anybody’s?”

But he didn’t answer. Instead he watched me as if waiting to see what I’d say next. I folded my hand under my chin and waited right back at him.  
“You know it is,” he said, finally. “You’re like a disease I can’t recover from. It can’t be genuine. It must be supernatural in nature, I think.”  
“That’s awfully dramatic of you, Monsieur romantique,” I said. “It’s also a little insulting. It’s just sex.”  
“Bullshit it’s just sex,” he said, employing his only indelicate word, the only one that he’d ever learned to use unselfconsciously. “And if it is, this is sex that – if you will forgive me – encapsulates or is altered by, or… actually, you are correct in your assessment, two hundred years of sexual frustration. My curiosity now,” he said, “is occupied by the fact that that I could have not done this until now. What was – and I really want you to answer this for me – what in the hell was I thinking?”

I laughed. “I don’t know. Didn’t you ever do it with Armand, you’ll never tell me that.”  
“No I never did,” he said. “I never did it with anyone. Maybe a little, but not really. Nothing ever like this. Though apparently it’s not news to you.”  
“Don’t be jealous, chaton. If you’re jealous, then I’ll have to be too and it’ll end horribly. Let’s be one of those liberated modern couples instead. An open marriage.”  
“You mean where you… what’s the colloquial parlance? Where you cheat on me all of the time? But we’re already there. I assume you have another appointment after this, do you not?”

I narrowed by eyes, but apparently he was joking. It wouldn’t do to fight now anyway, not when everything was so fairy-tale insular.  
“You’re just reacting to it like this because you’re a virgin,” I said. “I assure you that it gets boring, just like everything else.”  
“I don’t believe you.” His face had gone from indulgent to bewitching, and I hadn’t known he could be like this, not at all. “The human kind was fraught, but it never became boring. And this is several shades… more engrossing. ”  
“Well I don’t want to talk about monogamy,” I said.  
“I’m not asking you about monogamy. I’ve known you for two hundred years. I know better than to ask you anything like that.”

“Alright,” I said, though it stung me a little that he was so casual about it. It was no good cheating on him if he wasn’t going to be miserable. “Well, then, what if our lives become stagnant and uninteresting? What will we do when all the romance has gone? It does happen, you know.”  
“I don’t care,” he said. “How did we get to this? You’re defensive, suddenly. Have I upset you?”

It was one of those moments where I could choose either honesty or further defensiveness. I knew what I would have picked usually, but the strange suspendedness of this time and place had made me confessional.  
“No, it’s not you,” I said. “I’m just… don’t you ever worry that it’s no good loving anyone? Because they’ll leave you, because they probably didn’t even like you in the first place?”

He was silent for a moment. His face changed, as if he were thinking. “Look,” he said, “I do like you.”  
“You don’t always.”  
“Yes, sometimes you’re an aggravating, insufferable brat. But this is only some of the time.”  
“You like me more when I’m insufferable, don’t even try to deny it.”  
He pushed me with his foot. “Please don’t field-test that theory.”  
“I don’t like you all of the time either.”  
“I know,” he said. “You’re quite vocal about that.”  
“I am, aren’t I?” For some reason, this made me smile. “You’re quite easy to insult, you always believe it. Though you never believe the things that are actually true. Like the fact that you’re pretentious. Much too pretentious for someone with such shitty taste.”  
“Ah, there’s that insufferableness again,” he said, but he was smiling too. “I do mean it, though. I do like you. But we have to go out sometime. Though this is not to say that we won’t… come back.”

I must have made some noticeable noise at this, or some expression, because he began to look at me oddly. “What?” I said, but he didn’t say anything. He put his hand on my chest, laid it where my heart would have been if I’d had one. It was a strange gesture, as if he were pinning me there, though in reality I could have moved away very easily.

It was weighted because I loved him, I realized. For the hundred-thousandth time, even tonight. I said this easily now, but I doubted he knew how tenuous that ease actually was. I loved him, and I wanted his hand to stay there forever, but at the same time I couldn’t wait for it to be over, for him to move again. It was too much for me. Stillness was not something I could easily abide.

“I’m going to have to call Blackwood,” I said, because if things were going to be weighted then they should be really weighted. It seemed impossible that Blackwood even existed. “Do you think they’ll worry about me?”  
“Yes, I think they will. You should tell them that you’re here.”  
“That I’ve moved.”  
“Have you?”  
“Let’s not talk about that now,” I said.  
“We’ll have to talk about it at some point, I think.”  
“Well, not now, alright?” I snapped. “Don’t badger me about it. God.”  
Silent again. He frowned, briefly, but then his expression reformed itself, became placid, and he began to stroke me a little.  
“Alright Monsieur. Have it your way.”

I was close to crying suddenly. It had come from nowhere, a blunt, sudden force behind my eyes. I blinked rapidly, in hopes that he wouldn’t notice. He was watching me quite intently. But I stayed still and the moment passed. I smiled. He didn’t.  
“Well, get dressed then,” I said. “Wear your leather coat. Take me to the movies. Date me. I want you to date me.”  
He didn’t move. “That’s where you want to go?”  
“You used to take me to the theatre. It was romantic.”  
“Yes, I remember. Though I don’t remember that it was romantic.”  
“You liked it,” I said. “Not that you’d know it from your horrible book.”  
“I need to do something about this blood. And cut my hair.”  
“You’ll do no such thing. There’s no need for that kind of self-mutilation.”  
“You’ve really got to let me wash.”  
“No, I never will. I like it, your filthiness. You smell of what we’ve been doing. It marks you as mine. My own precious sexual object.”

This made him blush, more even than his brief foray into informal language had, and for a moment I wondered if I had offended him. But he was smiling a small contented smile, and it seemed to me that I had somehow paid him a compliment. “You’re really in love with me, aren’t you, you poor fool?” I said.

But he was so quiet. As quiet as his gentle touches, as if we were the only two people alive in the world. He was drawing his hand over me as he spoke. It was striking, his white, white skin against my tanned. “Yes,” he said. “You’re so vital, even when you’re furious, you’re alive.”  
“I run on anger, I think.”  
“Mmm, perhaps. I’m beginning to see that about you. There are many things about you that I’m beginning to see.”  
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Don’t worry about my mystique or anything, I didn’t need it anyway.”  
“And what mystique is this, Monsieur évidente?” he said, with that same wry, indulgent smile. “You carry this treasured illusion that you are somehow unknowable. But it isn’t true, you know. You’re a study in transparency.”

His manner was somewhat infuriating, and actually it did threaten to make me a little angry this time. But I bit it back. He was flirting by challenging me, I told myself. He didn’t mean it as a real challenge, he hadn’t the courage. I measured my tone.  
“Yes, obviously I’m ready to get out of here,” I said. “Obviously, we have spent enough time alone in this bed for me to be rather fucking sick of you.”

Perhaps I hadn’t bitten it back as well as I’d thought. There was hurt in his eyes, I thought, and though it was fleeting, it was enough that I felt terrible. His hand, now resting lightly against my cheek, felt painfully frail to me, and it seemed incomprehensible that I could ever have done anything to harm him. Was it really this hard for me not to be a monster? I put my arms around him and pulled him against me again. “I’m teasing you, chéri,” I said. “Don’t make that face.”

He sighed, so I waited, but nothing was forthcoming.  
“What, Louis?” I demanded, and that was when he turned his face upward, toward mine, staring into my eyes. That boldness. God, I’d never get used to it. In the end it was I that looked away from him first.

“I wish you wouldn’t look so chastened,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you.”  
I hadn’t realized I had been. “Louis…” I began, but I had nothing to follow it with, and he was still looking at me.  
“That’s my name,” he said. “You are allergic to apology. We’re going to fight about this eventually.”  
“Or talk about it,” I said. He snorted.  
“What?”  
“You know what,” he said. “You can’t “talk” anymore than you can dress innocuously. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

Alright, so I’d upset him. The solution was to apologize. “Louis,” I said, “I like the way you say ‘we’re going to.’ I admire your commitment to our future together.”

But his face had become rather incredulous. “You’re… oh mon dieu, it doesn’t matter.”  
“What?”  
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Let me go.”

I did him one better. I shoved him off me so that he fell out of the bed. He rescued himself from gracelessness somehow, making his tumble artful, but it was apparent to both of us that I had intended to hurt him. He stood up with his hands on his hip and raised an eyebrow at me. I wondered whether or not he would let me get away with it.

He did. I thought. Though his voice was a little wary.  
“It shouldn’t take me very long,” he said. “Perhaps you could look at the listings.”  
“Perhaps I’ll come in with you.”  
“If you must.” His posture was difficult to read, composed as he was, so I took him at his words.

But what were they, really? What would he have said? I don’t remember. I do remember following him, and how awkward it was, and how slowly it became less awkward as I soaped his back for him, but I don’t remember anything else. He would let me do this, this kind of thing. I was allowed to do it instead of apology, to hurt him and then to be gentle with his body as if he were some kind of precious commodity. Little kisses to his wet neck, and eventually, though he wouldn’t forgive me in words, he would do so with gestures.

I would have apologized. But the reality is that I’m not very good at it.


	3. That Thing I Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emails, recalling the period following Memnoch. Louis runs hot and cold.

That Thing I Do

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: That thing I do

You have to tell me what that thing I do is. You spoke of it as if I ought to know what it was. I don’t. Tell me what it is.

Assuming, of course, that you can actually use email. If not, you should learn. It’s not difficult.

De baisers,  
Lestat x

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: That thing I do

As you have no doubt reasoned by now, yes, I can use email. I can also use Netflix and amazon.com, which is, of course, why I have email in the first place. I don’t have it for social correspondence. This is not a hint so much as it is a direct request: don’t send emails to me. At all, if you please. For one thing is in violation of our no-contact agreement, and for another, while I’m glad you’re so proud of the skill, I’ll be seeing you in a few days, so it’s also redundant.

Ask me about it then, in session, as you are supposed to.

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: That thing I do

Don’t be an asshole, Louis.

I know that’s hard for you, I really do, but please don’t. You’re impeding my recovery and I will tell the Doctor on you.

Je t’embrasse très fort

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: That thing I do

It’s interesting that you write of it as “recovery”. Do you think that you, or I, have events or behavior to “recover” from? I don’t mean to dispute this interpretation, I’m simply interested.

It’s difficult to tell how you are in communications like these.

Sincerely,  
Asshole

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: That thing I do

Isn’t it, though. I’m flattered that you care.

Recovery was a word I used impulsively, but your question has made me examine it. And I suppose I do think of it that way – present situation unending, thought of enduring it eternally somewhat depressing.

PS: I lol’d.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That thing I do

>>PS: I lol’d  
I don’t know what this means.

I may care against my better judgment, but I care. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That thing I do

>>>>PS: I lol’d  
>>I don’t know what this means.  
OH MON DIEU. Do you ever go out of your apartment, even on the internet? Surely someone has used this expression, even on amazon, in a context that you were able to understand its meaning. I suspect you of being willfully ignorant, and with that I cannot help you. Except in this: get down off your high horse, Monsieur Literary. You are annoying me.

IF YOU WERE REALLY SORRY YOU’D TELL ME ABOUT THE THING.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That thing I do

Here:

This was when you weren’t in a coma any more. Or at least, it was when you had first emerged from the church basement to sleep at the flat on the Rue Royale. I suppose in your room, though you weren’t there all the time. It occurred to me that you fed sometimes, and that you had other, possibly human contacts, with whom you stayed. But I thought that you probably didn’t. I don’t know if you remember that – I suppose you do, since you recounted some of it for ‘Memnoch’ – what you were like then, about taking anything from humans. I actually suspect you weren’t hunting at all then, though I acknowledge that I may be wrong. It doesn’t matter, not really. All I know is that I wanted you too. I didn’t like the idea of your hurting yourself by not feeding. I knew (and I know better now how truly) that the desire to do so was stronger for you than for me - even if the physical need wasn’t. But I didn’t like to ask. That is a failing on my part, for which I apologize. I never knew how to begin this conversation with you.

I allow myself the leniency that this was because it seemed insensitive to me to raise the subject. I’d have had to ask some fairly direct questions about your mental health, and I didn’t want to. I thought it would be rude. Besides, if Maharet and Marius had let you go, I trusted their judgment. That was their job, to assess you in this way. I personally had used up all of my ability to do so, by which I mean that after many months with you in that basement, I had long since ceased to evaluate your sanity on anything beyond a minute comparative scale. I wouldn’t have been anywhere else, of course, but I was of no use to anybody as a diagnostician. The experience had used me up completely.

Honestly, it was because I am a coward. I simply didn’t want to hear you say anything to confirm that you were really gone away, or irreparably different from the person you used to be, and eventually the basement – and now the flat – were filled with unfocused repetitions of the direct questions I was unable to put to you. “Are you insane?” “Do you really believe you met the devil?” “What is it that you saw?” Whatever I would have asked you, I heard those questions continuously, breathlessly circulating, louder because I simply didn’t want them answered. I’d listen to you come and go, and David had talked to you a little, and he would talk to me about it, about what you said, and I let myself trust him. But he doesn’t know you like I do, and I knew that. But I didn’t like to say anything. I know that the real reason for this is that I am a coward. For this also, I apologize.

Still, I suppose I should have expected that, after a few intermittent weeks of this kind of thing, you would come into my room. I don’t recall what I was reading exactly, though I’m certain it was in French, and that it was a non-fiction book (how strange that I remember that and not what it was. Some details are more important than others, I suppose.) I put the book down immediately. I felt a little sick. Possibly it was the shock of seeing you standing there, rather than bunched up, or stretched out on the floor and covered in dust. At first you looked dismissively through my things, touching something here and there, moving it around, but then you looked up, focused your eyes on me, and I found that they were still grey. It wasn’t that I had forgotten, only that I expected them to be accusatory, and they were not. Instead, the color grey was the first, and for some moments the only thing about them that I noticed.

Yet I had become so used to you as an invalid that this gaze of yours was profoundly strange. When I would sit with you in the church basement, you would never look at me. Sometimes, you’d be sleeping – or at least, your eyes would be closed as if you were. And you’d be restless, physically. But most of the time, you looked as if you were focused something I couldn’t see. Something very far away, and very difficult to comprehend. Something far outside of, or just on the other side of the basement walls. Even the one or two times you had grabbed my hand and I had held yours in response, or the time you moved your head into my lap, you wouldn’t look at me. Actually, I wasn’t sure you were able to. And now this moment where you were looking directly at me, completely aware of my presence and completely engaged with it. Seeing you standing up, too, and in proper light – that was all different and striking. You were still quite brown, which I hadn’t known. I don’t recall if we spoke or just looked at each other. I must have been quite stopped by this, and again, I apologize.

Then, you asked me how I was and I said that I had no complaints. I expect I politely returned the question, and my assumption is that you probably answered it. I do remember you moving around a little bit, as if you were physically uncomfortable. Then, after some time, you came, very carefully, to the edge of my bed and crawled over the footboard. You moved like a cat, gracefully, but also as if you expected me to challenge or stop you. I didn’t, of course, and you climbed over and sat on top of the blanket, still looking at me. I couldn’t read your expression at all – I thought you looked determined, but about what I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know what you wanted. Then you closed your eyes and moved your hands in front of your face and lay down sideways. I had no idea how you expected me to respond. I touched your shoulder and asked if you were alright. You said one word, “yes,” which was obviously a profound lie, but I waited for some time and you didn’t say anything else. I asked you another question and received another terse answer.  
“Can you hear me?” I think I said, “can you hear my voice?” or something like that.  
“Yes, of course I can,” you said. But you didn’t move from this strange position.

I began to worry. I almost called out for David, but I did not. You’ll laugh at me when you read this, of course you will, but I didn’t call out because I didn’t want to frighten you. I thought that might happen if I spoke loudly, or did anything sudden. I didn’t want to frighten you, whether because of my own safety (which at the time was actually something of an issue) or because the idea of doing that to you pained me a little under the circumstances. It was probably a combination of the two. I tried to take your hand instead, to feel it, and by association to feel something of you, but you were bunched up so tightly I couldn’t uncurl it. For the next few minutes, I did absolutely nothing.

Then, in the absence of a better idea, I leaned back against the headboard and began reading aloud, in a quiet, measured voice, from the place I had got to. I wasn’t reading anything that would be interesting to you, or at least I don’t think I was, but you didn’t seem to mind about that. Then again, you didn’t really respond. You didn’t do anything – literally nothing. You were as still as if you were a part of the room, and you stayed that way, as I read, out of unacknowledged desperation, until some time just before dawn. At that point, you sat up, slid off the bed, and slunk out without saying anything.

I was confused until this happened several times over subsequent weeks. You didn’t come every night, but I came to expect it and to again select things to read I thought you would enjoy. Though not all of the time. This was my room, after all, and so I read you some of my own things. ‘The History of Sexuality’, for example. On the one hand, the book made some interesting points about the French Revolution, about which we’d argued in the past, but it mostly was something I had intended to read for some time. Michel Foucault was a declared fan of Cocteau’s writings, apparently. In consequence I was interested in his philosophical work and wondered if his thoughts corresponded to my own. They didn’t really, but it was still interesting. I though about what you’d have said had you been interested in that discussion “the repressive hypothesis? But that is about you, Louis.” (I could hear your voice, you see. I can always hear it. It is internalized. Actually, Michel Foucault has a word for that, but it isn’t important. Though maybe that’s why I wanted to read it to you. I suppose I’ll never know. What did you think of it, if you remember? Tell me on Friday).

At any rate, for this purpose I tended to select the better kind of trash. Literary trash, the kind you like. Detective novels, that kind of thing. It felt strange reading Shakespeare plays on my own, instead of as one half of a performance with you, but I even attempted to vary the character voices somewhat. We had both done that for Claudia, and now I did it for you. I suppose I remembered it, doing it for her. I wondered if you did too. We seldom spoke besides my reading, though you would often say “goodnight” as you left, or sometimes ask or say a few words about where I had been or what I had been doing. It was very minimal though. Your tone would be light and conversational for a few minutes and then you would lie down and say nothing. Occasionally you would sigh at some sentence or other, but that was it. I read you sonnets. I suppose that was what we were used to.

Sometimes, however, you’d open your eyes and look with great concentration at something I couldn’t see, until it was only the knowledge that you had walked in to my room under your own stead that allowed me to understand you were not still in that strange, wakeful coma as you had previously been. Once or twice I was late about feeding and I’d come in to find you already there. On those occasions, you lay across the foot of the bed on your back, with your feet over the edge. Could you see the stars through the ceiling, I wondered. If you could, or could imagine them, you never looked worried about it. Though of course I worried about you.

Other nights I had somewhere to be, or took David up on some offer, and I wouldn’t see you at all. I don’t know where you went then. At one point I telephoned Marius from wherever I was, and he said you had not been back to the church. I don’t know why I didn’t just ask you. I’m a coward. You weren’t well – spiritually. I knew it because it was obvious, but I didn’t want to hear you tell me that you might not recover from it and so I didn’t ask. I just read. On those nights that I did come and you weren’t there, well. I’m sure you understand. I’m sure you know. I’ve said it frequently enough by now. Every risk you take hurts me. Every risk. And yet I didn’t like to ask. You would come back, and I knew that, and that would have to be enough. I could have asked if I’d wanted to know. You would have told me. And yet I didn’t.

Instead, on one of these nights, when you sat up to leave, I asked you to stay. I said, I think, “stay, if you’d like.” You looked at me. “You want me to sleep in here with you?” you said, as if it had never occurred to you that I might. I told you that I did, and you wondered aloud if there was room in my coffin. You were restless in your sleep, you said, at least presently. You thought it might be annoying for me. I said, “I know,” because I did, and that I didn’t mind. You didn’t say anything about that, so I pulled my coffin out from its home under my bed and got into it. You swung your legs back and forth on the edge of the bed for a little while. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” you asked me. I was struck by it. You don’t usually. I mean, you wouldn’t usually care, and the fact that you did was confronting. You and I are almost the same height, but you seemed so small when you said this, so little and brown, and quite thin. It hurt me. Physically. I was almost overwhelmed by it, by this altered picture of you. It was so – actually the word I want to use is incorrect – that it came with a feeling of physical sickness, as if my vision was faulty, as if I’d been struck on the head.

I told you that I was sure, and told you to get in. I smiled as if this would make the sick feeling go away. It didn’t (it made it worse) though at this, you got up and strutted about the coffin as if you were thinking about it, and that did, a little. Then you looked at me, quickly, waiting to see if I would change my mind, and it came back instantly. I lay down then tried to stay as still as I could. I knew you’d just run away if I didn’t. I could see it in the way you stood. There are times in which you have no ability to control the things you communicate to an observer, no ability to lie with your stance. Like an animal. You’re always like an animal. A cat, particularly, but in this instance you looked as if you had been cornered.

Eventually (I don’t know how long it was until you did this, I was too busy performing my perfect stillness – the cure for seasickness, focusing my sight on the horizon, which in this case was you and your animal thoughts) you stepped into the coffin and started to lie down on top of me. This was done awkwardly, with none of your usual grace. In fact, you leaned on my arm in the process, and it hurt and made me move a little. It was such a small thing. It really didn’t hurt very much, but you seemed so crestfallen about it, positively ashamed. You apologized – “oh shit, shit, I’m sorry” - and started to get up. I told you – I tried to sound certain and calm though actually I was quite nervous - that you were alright, in just those words. I said, “but you’re alright.”

I also put my arms around you very gently as I said it, as if to demonstrate, though I wasn’t sure how you would react to that. You might easily leap away, I thought, as I did it, but instead you lay down fully on top of me and put your head on my shoulder. It seemed light and uncertain, though. I cautiously adjusted myself, trying to be physically compatible with you, to make room, to make you more comfortable, but you flinched when I did this, and moved yourself to get up again, so I stopped moving and tightened my arms briefly. Then I closed the lid.

It was, as it always is, completely dark in the coffin. I felt you shift several times and through all of this I tried to hold you. I wasn’t comfortable, but I thought if I moved at all you would again try to get out. I concentrated on keeping you there, and eventually, I became tired enough not to care about my discomfort. I could feel your breath on my neck, and I thought what a strange affectation it was, for you to breathe. Since you don’t need to, I mean. Your lungs weren’t actually doing anything besides acting. This hot whisper at my throat seemed so familiar to me, and so much like you, but it hadn’t been altered by you at all. It was nothing but air. How peculiar, I thought, that breathing was still reflexive for your body. As it is for mine, I suppose, because I must have breathed too, though at the time I wasn’t thinking about that.

At the time, actually, I recall only the clear understanding that the being on top of me was an animated corpse, that at most you were a living statue. But I only understood it so totally because of the strangeness in knowing it. I could feel you, and you didn’t feel that way to me. To my own hands, you felt warm and pliant, as if you were not only living but terribly, terribly breakable, the merest arrangement of bones. I recall moving my hand over your back, as if I could somehow hold your body together by doing this. You were wearing very loose, soft clothes then, which I suspect you had chosen deliberately to represent yourself as being in convalescence. Actually, I suspect that when you finally die, your sense of fashion as dictated by occasion will be the last part of you to stumble, but at the time I only felt the softness of these fabrics, and underneath that, the misleading softness of you. I wanted you to sleep. I wanted to be the one to make you safe to do that. I loved you, of course. All of these feelings. It was because I loved you.

This, however, my loving you, it didn’t matter. Because, as promised, here is an example of the thing you do: I was almost asleep when you said my name. You said, “Louis?” in my ear. I only barely responded. The sun was almost up, and my whole body could feel it and fought to drive me toward unconsciousness. But you said it again - “Louis?” – and I had to pay attention. I told you to be quiet, I told you to try to sleep. I said it could wait until later, whatever it was, and held you a little tighter. I would still be here. I wouldn’t leave you. I was trying to tell you this physically to make you understand. “Are you and David fucking?” you asked me.

I didn’t answer you. Of course I didn’t. It was shocking, and offensive, and ridiculous. But it bothered you that I didn’t answer (it always bothers you when I won’t do what you say) and you asked me again. I told you, again, to go to sleep. But you were, as you always are, uninterested in being told what to do, and you sat up – as much as you could in the coffin at any rate, leaned up would be more accurate – and said, “why won’t you answer? Louis?” you asked. “It is a straightforward question,” you said. “Are you exchanging blood with each other? Are you fucking?”

I opened my eyes, though it didn’t do much good. I could see your outline, but no more than that. I couldn’t see your face, though you could probably see mine, with your particular eyes. I have no idea what was on it. Disbelief, I suppose. Incredulousness. You tell me.  
“Be quiet or get out,” I told you. “I won’t ask you again.”  
You did, however, ask me again, and quite angrily this time, so I opened the coffin and told you to get out. You looked at me, furious (there was a little light in the room) and I’m sure I would have been frightened by this had I not been half-way to sleep. But you did get out. And when you did, I closed the lid and then I went all of the way to sleep. A few nights later, I found you in your own room.

And that’s it. There’s no more to tell. You were stretched out and silent, and I resumed the process of reading to you (which perhaps I meant as apology, though there is scarcely any point to speculating now), but nothing eventuated. Still, as I say, none of it matters now. So I hope this description satisfies you; that is what you do. Whatever the fuck that is, that I’ve just described. That is the thing you do.

Anything else you have to ask me, you can ask on Friday, in session, _as you are supposed to_. Now, avec toute mon affection, I am gone.

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That thing I do

I hate you.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That thing I do

Oh, it’s mutual.

Do you want to tell the therapist about this, or shall I?


	4. A Fucking Therapist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some Walmart, but mostly just Lestat's self-loathing and non-disclosure. Also, mo’ money, mo’ problems.

A Fucking Therapist

 

I drove to Biloxi last night, but I can’t be bothered to tell you about it.

 

I mean, I’ve turned the computing machine on, and I’ve obviously opened a document, but my fingers are stalled at the keys even as I’m typing at them. What on earth about this is worth telling you? Biloxi? I went there. Killed a person. Went gambling. Didn’t work on my album. Drove home. You can finish it yourself if you’d like. Insert grand statements about the state of the world as you please! Conclude unpleasantly, and be sure to leave the audience with a general sense of disquiet! Maybe make some clever reference to John Kennedy Toole, author of _A Confederacy of Dunces_ , and the fact that he committed suicide there. It’s not as hard as it looks, I promise you. The dog could write it, if he didn’t have better things to do.

 

Or we could just leave it here, if you’d prefer. Last night I drove to Biloxi. It’s not very far away from Mobile. Most of the casinos were irreparably damaged by Katrina, and Deepwater Horizon may have dealt them a death blow, but some of them are open again now, and the way they cling to life is charming and just so endearingly human. They can’t even be licked by a hurricane, people. Nor by their own industry. There’s some kind of revelation in that, I’m almost sure of it. At least I was almost sure of it last night in Biloxi, where I was spending money like it didn’t matter, because it doesn’t, having a “good time” and making incredible, insightful judgments about humanity for the benefit of the soft, Southern flower I’d picked up at Walmart and brought with me. At some point I got bored of it, and drained her to death, and then I drove home. And there you go, the end. That’s chapter three. I know. It disappointed me too. 

 

You’re also going to find this disappointing, unfortunately, but I have to tell you anyway, because it’s true. Are you listening? Well, it’s this: no matter our movements and changes, no matter our driving to Biloxi and picking up young women on the way in an attempt to not visit harm on others, there is something about every vampire that remains fundamentally stuck. For example, Louis will tell you about his car at some point later in this story. I know this because I’ve written it down, his speech, even if I’m not relaying it yet, and what he will tell you about it is true. He will tell you that his Chevette was full of bullshit, and it was. On Disaster Night, the night the Deepwater Horizon oilrig caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico and certain other Important Events were set in motion, Louis’ Chevette was full of bullshit, and he said so.

 

It probably still is. Hell, I don’t even have to speculate; I can attest it with confidence. It is inevitably still like that. Because that’s stuck, you see? Louis will always be halfway between fastidious and filthy, and so I predict, in my infinite observational wisdom, that the Chevette is as full of bullshit as it ever was. On Disaster Night it was full of books and paper and other indiscriminate things, Louis’ habit of careless, untidy stockpiling unchanged by independence or relocation. Nothing had shifted that in two hundred years, and I have no reason to suspect that anything would have done so now.

 

Nor does it matter that I haven’t been in a position to assess this, the state of the Chevette. I have all the information I need. Tomorrow, when I see Louis, I will see him _sans_ vehicle, in the therapist’s office, where he sits at the other end of the couch, neatly folded and physically autonomous, unconnected to the car or to me. His coat has started to get a hole at one of the elbows and I swear he continues wearing it just to piss me off. These are the kind of details I need to make this supposition – Louis is still Louis, and so it doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen the Chevette in months (at least, not the inside of it. I see it in the parking lot every fortnight, squatting there like a burnt orange animal, leering at me over its grill). I hadn’t seen inside it that much anyway. Disaster Night, the first night of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, was one of very few times I rode in it; I was trying to get in his pants, sure, but there are limits and Louis has never learned to distinguish between fashionable, conspicuous consumption and the more general kind.

 

But I’ll tell you the rest of that later. Disaster Night, Date Night, its superficial “meaning”, the continuation of that story. It’s a slightly more complicated set of thoughts, and they belong in another chapter, because I don’t have the energy for them now. Not after going over our old communications and recognizing what a spectacular idiot I am. That’s too painful, being hit in the face with it, my own vile dishonesty, and all of those associated recollections. 2010 was a year of regrets, something I might have anticipated had I only remembered Louis’ messy Chevette, and it pains me that I didn’t. Had I only remembered - Louis is halfway between fastidious and filthy, like I told you about, Louis is incapable of certain things. And more to the point, I am incapable of compensating for them. Because we’re stuck, don’t you see? We’re stuck being what we are. Because of some supernatural accident, Louis will always be Louis, and I will always be whatever it is that I think I am.

 

Okay, okay. So it’s not an accident. So I did that to him. And I should admit that, and “own” it and whatever other tedious term you want to use for it. There’s more that I’ve done to him, and things that I’ve done to other innocents, to that girl in Biloxi, to the world in general just by living in it. But Louis especially, as you’ll see. I’m a monster! I know it! I promise you that I know! I promised you honesty, and you’ll have it, but you’ll also have to allow for the fact that I’m having a terrible time right now. Feel sorry for me, I’m wallowing. I’m a vile, murdering monster, but I want your pity, I do.

 

And I’m aware that it’s undignified to tell you that, you know. But this is just how it’s going to be for a little while, while you’re reading. Just while I (oh, mon dieu) “process” this bitterness by writing about it. I can afford it. I don’t have a job to go to. Vampires don’t have jobs besides the obvious, and anyway this is my job. Sitting in my flat, burning up my electric bill on an expensive laptop and hundreds and hundreds of lights. I can afford it. There’s not much I can’t. You’ve got to know that by now. No filthiness for me either, no stockpiling. I have a _housekeeper_.

 

This, by the way – having a housekeeper - is something that Louis loved to criticize, in spite of that endearing filthiness of his. Not cleaning up after myself, as if tidiness were some kind of noble endeavor, next to Godliness, this he regarded as some essential character flaw. This is what I mean when I talk about incapability. It isn’t as if he ever did it, it’s just that he didn’t like to think about what not doing it meant for some poor working woman whom I paid a reasonable, if not generous, wage. It’s also that Louis, like every member of the moneyed middle classes, is firmly stuck between embarrassment at excess, and the need to properly display it so nobody thinks you’re déclassé. Slaves yes, but not, apparently, servants. And don’t think I didn’t point that contradiction out, because I did.

 

Though I recall this fondly, don’t be fooled. Such frail contradictions, so awkwardly caught, as if mortal concerns had always weighed upon him too heavily. It couldn’t have been any other way. That Godawful bourgeois bastard! I loved him from the moment I saw him and I will love him until death. When I hate him, it is because I love him, and though I can never explain this to the therapist, there is really nothing unusual about that. The sensations are equivalent in weight and value, something I suspect Louis understands. Louis is as good at accounting as a Protestant Calvinist. This is a holdover from having managed a Plantation. And it is a skill I unfortunately lack, and a lack of which I am presently aware. So don’t be fooled.

  
I mean, these are uncertain times, financially. You probably know that already. I know this because my business manager rang tonight, to speak to me about the property market - apparently, residential property in central London is very favorable to the international investor right now, though beyond that simple fact I was only pretending to understand what he was talking about. Some of what he told me involved the phrase “short selling”, which supposedly there’s some kind of regulatory problem with, but I don’t really know what that is. He said he’d have to be creative, so I took this as my cue to tell him that this was perfectly fine. I do like to give the impression that I care. That’s my money they’re moving from nation to nation, after all. But I figure you’ll be pleased to know that I, personally, am still making money. Hand over fist, actually, or so I’m told. That’s nice to know, isn’t it? Especially since I was gambling. I do live a lifestyle that requires some economic maintenance.

 

Anyway, I think what happened is that I bought property in central London tonight, though I can’t be entirely certain about it. It’s something to do with a hedge fund, and to be completely honest, I stopped listening as soon as numbers came into it. Louis would know what to do. He’d know what short selling was. I would say, “numbers are boring,” and he would pretend to mind, and then he would do the math for me and tell me what to do. I never once did it, of course, but I do miss the performance. I miss seeing Louis fold his paper and sigh and make some muted comment about responsibility – “don’t you even know what a hedge fund _is_?” And I miss having dependents. I’m still funneling some of this money to Blackwood, and to Rowan, and to various other subsidiaries, but it’s not as if it makes a dent.

 

At this, your hero sighs deeply. Go and buy yourself another Armani suit, Lestat. That’ll make you feel better. Or better yet, get the hell out of your flat. Just for an evening, just for a little bit. Drive around like you did yesterday. Tell them about the drive. Tell them about the beach in Mississippi. That would probably be a good idea. Better than sitting around brooding. Better than sitting around stuck. Anything’s better than that.

 

Besides, reading old emails doesn’t change anything. No matter what we used to say to each other, I can’t ask Louis for financial advice. That would be against the rules. He would see it for what it was – an excuse to speak with him outside of session - and he would hear me for what I am - stupidly, pathetically, crawlingly in love with him. I figure you’ll also be pleased to know that loving Louis remains absolutely fucking humiliating in every particular, thank you so much for asking about it. I love to remember my humiliations, of course – that’s what being a novelist is for, for hating oneself on paper, for dramatized self-degradation before an audience, and God grant me the knowledge that I shall always be splendid at that.

 

But I’ve told you. You know. So you’ll tolerate me, won’t you, when I tell you that love is for suckers and isn’t that small pun terribly profound? You’ll forgive me, because this is bitterness that drives me to write what I’m writing here. Here’s some half-baked, home-fried wisdom to explain it to you: love is always humiliating. There’s no point to anything without it, and yet it will kill you damn dead, like a split open toad, roasted to oblivion on a road in the country sun. It will kill you dead even if you are dead already, and once it has done this, everybody will see you, everybody will see your insides. Yeah, you’re visible, and yeah, I know. I don’t like it either.

 

I don’t like it, but I have nobody to blame. I agreed to it, didn’t I? I went along with it. I did Couples Therapy, I’m still doing it, and I don’t want to do it and I don’t want to talk about it ever, ever again, because it is stupid and pointless and there is nothing about it to say (except that this too is expensive. Therapists specializing in vampires are not cheap). But then, perhaps the only possible response to the kind of living exhaustion that comes from expansive adventures and world-designing grandiosity and dreaming of sainthood and staring into God’s face is to become personally neurotic, and that’s my only explanation for you. I shan’t bother to clarify any further than that. Look, in the simplest of possible terms, after a certain number of nervous breakdowns and horrible relationships, a person, even an undead person, is entitled to see a fucking therapist without any comment from you.  
  
Yes, you. I can hear you salivating from here, you know. You want to know about my personal life, don’t you? That’s what you always say.  
  
Look, read it as a genuine attempt at honest self-reflection, I don’t care. I literally do not care what you think of it, or what you think of me after you’ve read this (such frail contradictions! so awkwardly caught!) I have given up. I no longer rage. This is the total absence of fighting spirit. Enjoy it, my dearest. You won’t encounter much in this world that asks so little of you in the way of love and attention. Okay, yes, Couples Therapy. Louis and I did that. That happened. But don’t forget about the oil spill! It’s a “thing.” It’s “literature.” Happy now?  Yes, hello, dearest. It’s all still very deeply fucking conceptual up in here. Just call me Vampire King of the Avant-Garde. No really. Please do.  
  
Actually, don’t do that. I don’t want to be taken seriously anymore. I’ve used up my energy for performance art. Save it for my dying fan-club. Write my agent a letter. Seal it with perfect, mortal kisses. Do not, under any circumstances, address it to the Vampire King of the Avant-Garde. That’s not the right title for someone who drove down to Biloxi last night for no actual reason, except for the fact that it wasn’t Gulfport or Fairhope or Dauphin Island, but Biloxi by way of Walmart, listening to the worst kind of music. I’m home tonight, and I’m planning to write about it but literally nothing is better for it and I may as well have not gone.

 

At the very least it would have saved you reading this dreary, miserable chapter that I was going to write but have actually failed to write for you, in which I had planned to tell you about how I drove down to Biloxi through the projects last night, wondering if I did this for Louis because of the way he always tended to insist that we take surface streets on principle. Perhaps it was a romantic gesture, and therefore forgivable. Perhaps that explains everything, even the music. I do mean the worst kind of music, by the way. I really do. I’ve been listening to ‘Pieces of You’ on repeat for three nights now. I am exactly as ashamed of that as I should be. When the song ‘Near You Always’ plays, I cry. I’m more ashamed of this than I am about what I said to Louis before he left. Those were only words. This is Jewel.  
  


That’s what I was going to write about. Really. I was going to write about that. That’s what we’ve come to.

 

But let’s not. Let’s fix it, shall we? Shall we instead imagine that you are with me, in a little way, in my Porsche, in the passenger seat, because that is where you belong. We’ll imagine that I am reinventing myself totally, and I will invite you to come on this journey with me, with a brand new Southern gentleman, brand new iphone, a brand new Vampire Lestat. To Biloxi, for gambling, and we will drive as stars fall, as they say, on Alabama. I’ll spot you. Don’t worry. I am, after all, still making money. And there is no paper in the Porsche. I am not stuck between fastidious and filthy. This is movement now, I’m not stuck anywhere at all.  
  
But let’s get something else to listen to first, at the Walmart, before leaving town. Walmart is open all 24 hours, after all. You have 24 hours to buy a pair of pants or a novel or a gun, or in this case a compact disc recording of something contemporary and listenable. Whatever you like, chéri. Just not Jewel, I’m sick of listening to that misery.

 

They will look, by the way. It’s bad for being seen here, even the tan doesn’t help much under fluorescent lights like this, but we don’t care about that now, do we? Fair is fair – I’m there to look at them, why shouldn’t they look at me? I don’t stop them any more, I don’t even think “beware,” or “look away,” or anything that I used to. I don’t need to be protected, and a general social apathy renders any other disruptive powers my being seen might have had inert. They have each other to worry about. The last lynching in this town was in 1981. Aren’t you listening? I said you could pick the record.

 

Oh, it’s because you can smell that? Yes, I can too. 1981. It has a smell, hot and metallic, and their apathy is like a lacquer over it. Underneath, it’s bayou and blood and savagery, and they’re all frightened like animals, frightened to the core of those violent depths within each other. The ill-defined supernatural is nothing at all to the fear of other humans. And even if they look, if they see me as the devil, I’m not a threat to them, not really. Not until I am.  
  
But it’s too late by then. Then there’s no recourse for you now. I strike. You’re dead. Now, you shouldn’t have come with me, dearest. You really should have been frightened. I’m hiding here eternally, amidst this quiet savagery, like a gator in the undertow, achieving nothing, making no movement at all. A gator with a fucking therapist! What’s the onomatopoeia for giving up? Imagine the sound of me turning off my word-processor without saving document.

 

Because we’re stuck, don’t you see? We are what we are, and for eternity, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Changes aren’t really changes for us, not in the face of so much time. Words are exchanged, like capital, and the exchange is continuous, and I’ll always wish I were better at it. I’ll always wish I’d been quick-witted enough, that when Louis had said what he said to me on the night I was telling you about before, when he’d called me a disease, I would have thought to call it The Consumption.

 


	5. Accidents Happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our boys go on a driving date on the Gulf Coast. Then, they park. Quite a long chapter, though not the longest one.

Accidents Happen

 

Some nights last year, Louis would buy me a book. It was the same way every time. There are only a few bookstores in Mobile proper, and I was always sure he must have exhausted them. But every time, he would promise to be brief, and every time his compulsive browsing would take him literal hours.

 

I would inevitably sulk. When Louis noticed, usually around the point at which I was sitting in one of those complimentary chairs and glaring at him from across the room, he would buy me something and give it to me to read. I would accept these gifts grudgingly, saying with a studied sullenness, “but you _promised._ ”

 

It is a source of genuine amazement to me now, the fact that I never learned to anticipate it. I was always angry. I never remembered that the book would be, as it was every single time he did this, absolutely perfect. In these moments, Louis bought me gifts of such intimate reflection that I would find myself drawn in by degrees, lost in whatever world he had chosen for me, until at last he would come to collect me, and I would have forgiven him totally.

 

I’d never admit it, though. I never said thank-you. We had it down to a fine art, Louis and I. “Shall we go?” he’d say, faintly drawn, as if it had been me keeping us there, and I would slip the book into the back of my pants and regard him resentfully. I would follow him out of the store, griping at him for every sin I could think of, following him seamlessly from one form of consumption to the next.

 

We didn’t always kill. We didn’t have to anymore. But he did always buy me a book. Whatever Louis felt for me, I never experienced it more genuinely than I did in those moments of selective, silent purchase.

 

The last book Louis bought for me – the last time he did this - was by Andy Warhol, the artist. _From A to B and Back Again_. It’s a book of philosophy, sort of. I read it twice in the store, and several times since. I loved it. I’ve never told Louis that, but I did. This is why: the chapter on beauty (titled ‘Beauty’), and the statement nestled among those particular pages that if you pay your dollar, you get your Coke.

 

On the surface that’s a null statement, I concede – so what, right? A Coke costs a dollar, sure, it’s not news. Prices adjusted for inflation, that’s the price of a Coke. But you’re missing something here, and that is the best part of what he said about it: that even if you’re the President, or Elizabeth Taylor (may she rest in peace), no amount of influence can get you a better Coke. “All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good,” Andy wrote. You tell me that’s not fantastic, I dare you. 

 

Admittedly, I wouldn’t know it for sure – I’ve never, not even in my brief and tragic holiday in human clothes, tasted a Coke - but I do buy things made of plastic, and plastic has similar abilities as a democratic leveler. Thanks to plastic, you’ll understand, a prince and a peasant can own the same bauble. Don't you see what I mean? I dare you to tell me that’s not the best expression of democracy you’ve ever heard.

 

Think about it! Plastic is reforming the world in its own image; fluid, solidified, hot. Magmatic, equitable humanness. Because of _that_ , dearest, because of _that_ there are movements, there are points of connection that there never were before. It's a plastic revolution! It’s through plastic, through _plasticity,_ that oh my dear, destinies are connected in ways they’ve never been.

 

You don’t believe me, I know that, but that’s because you don’t understand what it was like before. I do. I was cutting my teeth on the world before plastic had even been thought about, and you’ll trust me on this, here, when I tell you that it’s better. I know about it, just like Andy did. I know what plastic means, about its successes and its ubiquity. I know it because on the first night of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the night of Louis’ and my first real “date” in more than a decade, I bought a pair of black plastic sunglasses on impulse even though I wasn’t entirely sure I liked them.

 

You’ll forgive me for that, though. Of course you will. On this night, things were conducive to impulsivity, or at least I had thought they were when I was buying the glasses. On this night – Date Night, or Disaster Night, whichever of its two names you wish to call it by - Louis and I had stopped at a gas station in Spanish Fort en route to Fairhope, where hovering awkwardly between acquaintance and lover, Louis had filled the tank of his appalling burnt orange Chevette and used the word “consumer” with particular emphasis. It was a strange word. Striking. Our need to think about the impact of our consumption, he said, it wasn’t because we were not human. It was because we were. Or close enough to it, Louis said, close enough in certain ways.

 

“We’re still consumers,” he’d told me in Spanish Fort, using the word again, relishing it. He would have said this in his particular intellectual manner, taking precise discursive pains to show me what an important word it was. I don’t even have to remember that, I can infer it. Louis does not, as a general rule, use words by accident, and nor does he tend to bother himself with the kinds of subject matter that normal people (or normal vampires) might consider appropriate to dating. I’d been into the shop, and come out with the glasses, and now he wanted to talk about our personal culpability in the fact that there was an oilrig on fire off the Gulf Coast. It was perverse enough that it made me grin.

“Don’t you like them?” I asked, putting my fingers to their sides, striking a pose. “I know they’re tacky, but it’s a cute tacky.”

 

Louis looked up. As he’d bent forward in his efforts at the pump, his hair had slipped over his eyes in a manner that suggested he wasn’t used to its being there. It was, I realized, possible that he had left it long to specific purpose, and something splendid coursed through me as I contemplated what that purpose probably was.

“Weren’t you wearing another pair when we left?” 

“Yes,” I said, “but that’s not the point.”

 

He smiled then. It was beautiful. Beside the pump at the Spanish Fort gas station, he was slim and delectable, refined and anachronistic. He seemed – as he always seemed – like he ought to have a man to do these kinds of plebian things for him. But he filled the tank. He also seemed to know what he was doing with it. That was surprising to me. I was learning new things about him now; he had habits and abilities he’d learned in the years he’d been gone. Two nights later, he would show up on my temporary Mobile doorstep and unknowingly render it permanent, but now, in Spanish Fort, he filled the tank, and I was surprised by it.

 

“Some of us, perhaps, are more consumers than others,” he’d said, while the gas was pumping, and I suddenly remembered that he’d been talking instead of just standing there being attractive.

 

“This is what you’re thinking about? Human accidents?” I had asked him, ignoring his insinuation and leaning against the roof of the Chevette. I did this against my better judgment, as the car was filthy, but I wanted to look at him and the part of me that cared about cleanliness had been left behind in the therapist’s parking lot along with my Porsche.  I’m still not entirely clear on how this happened, but happened it had, and here we were. Spanish Fort on the way to Fairhope, at a nondescript gas station, purchasing gas for one of the worst models of car ever made. I had new plastic sunglasses, and I didn’t even care about my grey velvet suit. Though it turned out that it was only superficially damaged by leaning on the car in this way.

“And so what if we are?” I said. “Louis, mon cœur, you worry too much, you always did.”

 

Here, Louis shrugged. Sharp. But it wasn’t sharp at all, it was a soft, fluid slide of shoulder against clothing. Only my recognition was sharp. Particular too. Maybe that sounds mundane to you, a shrug, but have to recall that every movement Louis knows how to do is one that has been more than two centuries in the making. This shrug of his, I suppose it was Gallic originally but by now it is far, far more existentially weary than the best of French stereotypes, and it was familiar to me. Under the circumstances such familiarity was utterly, disarmingly charming.

 

Because we weren’t supposed to be dating. We weren’t supposed to be seeing each other outside of session at all. I wasn’t supposed to kiss him either, but oh, I was thinking about it. Putting my lips against his, or under his ear, or to the side of his neck, I thought about that. I didn’t _do_ any of it. Not yet. But I thought about it. You’ll forgive me for that though, for my dishonesty. It was, or so it seemed to me then, in the gas station forecourt in Spanish Fort, absolutely required by the situation.

 

Or, so I’d thought. I was too easily thrilled, I know that. Being excited by a soft shrug and a nondescript date (that was Louis’ actual word for it, by the way. A “date”) but after more than two centuries of killing time, you’ll find take your excitement where you can find it. You can’t really begrudge me for taking it here. It’s predictable, even ‐ tell Eve she can’t have the apple and see if it isn’t the only fruit she craves. Date Night, and something about Date Night, some unsaid and unacknowledged thing about Date Night, suggested that a particular performance was required. And I’ve already said this, you must be sick of hearing it, but it’s remarkable to me now, really, really remarkable, how very stupid I was. It was not, however, remarkable to Louis.

“It’s not a complicated argument,” he’d said, turning away from me, running his credit card through the machine. Oh yes. Yes, he was talking.

 

Remembering this, I watched him doing things with buttons, moving money around from invisible bank to invisible bank. His black clothes made him so much whiter.

“We consume much more than blood,” he said. “We’re consumers. We’re dependent on them, on that industry. We can’t get away from that, don’t you see? I tell you that you’re worse than I am, but that’s really only superficially true. Look at all this bullshit in my car.”

“Yet I’m the one accused of vulgar materialism,” I said. “Yes, chéri, I’d noticed.”

“Ah,” he said. “Had you?”

 

Oh, touché. I peered at him over the new glasses while he slid back into the driver’s seat, looking, I thought, triumphant. I pulled open my own door (by which I mean the passenger seat door, as unusual as that is to tell you) and I climbed in after him.

“I feel, mon cher,” I said, as archly as I could manage, “that if you’re going to drive a car at all you ought to respect it for the masterwork of engineering that it is.”

“I see,” he said. He did up his belt.

“You could at least hire someone to clean out all the paper.”

“I could,” he said. 

“And it needs servicing, you simpleton, otherwise it will break.”

“I know that,” he said. “I simply haven’t gotten around to it. There aren’t that many all night garages in this town.”

“It’s frustrating the hell out of me,” I said, finally. “What in God’s name were you thinking of, buying a Chevette? Is this some kind of tedious rebellion against something?”

 

He smiled again. Beautiful. “I wondered how long it would take you to give in to your aesthetic instincts,” he said. “I’m impressed you held out as long as you did. I suppose you took what the therapist said to heart. Did it hurt your feelings that he called you a control freak?”

“No,” I told him. “It hurt my feelings that you agreed with him.”

 

I actually thought he looked sorry when I said this. A flash of chastisement, or of guilt, as if he’d wrongly anticipated me. I left him hanging, and he ducked his head, opened his mouth to apologize. I was certain that that was what he was doing. But I suppose my face gave something away in that moment, because he laughed. Louis never really bursts with laughter – the closest he comes is a sort of restrained issuing - but this was bursting for him, and it was, just as his shrug had been, utterly, utterly charming. 

 

“You are, though,” he said. “You always have been. A control freak and a materialist. As if things are uncertain until you own them. We were here for ten minutes and you’ve bought something. You already had a pair of sunglasses.”

 

I should have been offended by his boldness. I am now, or I would be if I could work up the attention. I wasn’t then. Instead, for reasons unknown, I was warmed by this recognition of me, and of us, just as I had been by his (there’s no other word for it but this) his Louis-ish shrug, and by his laughter, and by the minute movements of his body as he moved things around in the car. He was looking for his wallet, which he had not had the good sense to put back in his pocket. I grinned, but I hoped that because my eyes were covered it would be ambiguous. I could see the wallet but I didn’t want to tell him where it was, or he’d never learn.

 

That and the fact that he’d leaned over me to look for it, and the scent of his closeness was so much sharper than I’d anticipated.

“A person can’t be _a_ materialist,” I would have said, all those months ago. Light, casual, suspended, as if it were connected to nothing. “It doesn’t make grammatical sense,” I would have said. “It’s an adjective, not a noun.”

 

But Louis had found his wallet while I’d been talking. He put his card back into it and looked at me. His eyes were such a fantastic green. Incapable of being expressionless, even now. Determinedly living. He held my gaze. I would have said anything.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m a control freak and a materialist. You’ve won Couples Therapy. I hope you’re happy.”

“You’d be amazed,” Louis said, “how little it takes to make me happy.”

 

I found I had to take off the glasses in order to be properly incredulous. “Winning at competitive therapy, and prominent news coverage of a very large fire,” I said. “Those are not little things, chéri. I can’t burn you an oilrig every night.”

“Rush Limbaugh suggested that someone actually did set it on fire,” Louis told me. I thought he seemed a little excited. Ghoulishly excited, the way a television weatherman does when announcing a blizzard. “‘Environmentalist whackos,’ he said. To discredit the drilling operation. That seems unlikely to me, but it is possible.”

“I don’t know who Rush Limbaugh is,” I said, slipping the glasses on again. I had decided I liked them after all.

 

“He’s a conservative pundit,” said Louis. “It doesn’t matter. He tends to specialize in saying inflammatory things.”

He turned the ignition then, and the Chevette strained audibly. I made no comment on this. Louis was pulling out of the forecourt, looking at the road and not at me.

“It doesn’t matter, though,” he said. “The coverage is interesting. Given the political context. But it doesn’t matter.”

Yes, you’ve said that, I thought, though I managed not to say that either.

“When ex-boyfriends invite me for drives, Louis,” I did say, “usually they don’t talk about human politics and insult my fashion sense.”

 

For a moment he was absolutely still. Hands on the wheel, foot placed on the accelerator like a dancer’s. The car was moving, but he wasn’t.

“I don’t have to insult your fashion sense,” he said. “It insults itself.”

 

I sprang forward in my seat. It was a total façade, my doing that. I was conscious of that then, even as the pretence seemed to run of its own volition.

“That’s outrageous!” I said, as it demanded I say. “Did you think of that quip when you were off reading Camus, you cartoon poseur?”

 

But I wasn’t really angry with him, and he knew it. His hands were at ten and two, his posture as ever immaculate, but his face was alive. Wry and tender, with two bright jewels for eyes, about which I might have come up with a better metaphor had I not been so totally distracted by looking at him.

 

“I thought of it while you were off buying things because they’re shiny,” he said. “You’re a magpie in the form of a person. Environmental disasters be damned.”

“You’re the one who bought gas.”

“Plastic,” said Louis, with the slightest rise of his eyebrows, as if he were holding the word on a napkin, “is a petroleum by-product.”

 

You’ll forgive me for not taking him seriously. I should have done, I know that now. But I could smell it on him! I could see it in his manner - he had decided, or was in the process of deciding, to belong to me again. Petroleum by-products seemed the least relevant thing on the planet in comparison to that. “I’ve done it all wrong,” I would be saying to him in approximately a week’s time and in some sense I would really believe it, “I’ve done everything all wrong. I should be gentle with you. You’re a fragile creature, like a fawn or an orchid. I have to handle you delicately.” A week later, I, with all of my superficial worseness and vulgar materialism, would become a disease he couldn’t recover from, and by proxy a sounding board for his strange and tedious and overly anxious ideas. So what if then, on April 20th, 2010, first night of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, an oilrig had virtually exploded in the Gulf of Mexico? As stupid as it must make me seem, I had not anticipated this as the start of a conversational trend.

 

“So what?” I said.

“So,” Louis said, looking at me in the mirror, “those glasses are as much a product of the petroleum industry as the gas.”

“You can’t make me feel guilty about the oil spill, Louis.”

“It’s not an oil spill yet. Though it probably will be. The effects are likely to be devastating, have you thought about that? If for no other reason, you do own property in Louisiana.”

“Louis,” I said, “this date is starting to suck.”

“I know,” Louis said. “I’m sorry about that. I’d intended it to be better but the disaster is a little distracting. It has the potential to be much worse than Exxon-Valdez, and the long term impacts are difficult to…”

“Louis,” I said, again, sharply, cutting him dead.

 

“I am sorry,” he said. And he sounded as if he meant it, which meant that the performance had gone awry. I had to recalibrate. I was touched by it, a little. It wasn’t as if he could help being what he was – Louis the philosopher, sensitive to such strange and unrelatable things. I remembered this about him now, and it made me want to be kind.

“That’s alright,” I said, charitably. “Next time, just don’t read the papers before we date.”

 

He nodded, once, appearing to give the matter some actual consideration. I laughed. I had to. He took me so seriously, and I was such a liar. “You can talk about it if you really want to.”

“No,” he said, “no, that’s fine, I don’t really want to.”

“I mean it. Environmentalist whackos. Go on, what’s the rest?”

“There’s no rest. That’s just what he said.”

“But you don’t agree?”

“I think it’s unlikely,” Louis said. “I think…well, I think that it requires consideration.”

“The spill?”

“It’s not a spill yet,” he said. “But no, I mean the industry itself. Haven’t you ever…”

 

He trailed off as we came to an intersection, which apparently required his attention.  I tensed momentarily, but for no reason at all. Well, for no real reason. Only because I was used to being the person driving, so used to it that being in the passenger seat made me itch. But Louis navigated the intersection without disaster and nothing fell on me. “Look, it just doesn’t matter,” he said. “What would you like to talk about?”

 

That seemed oddly portentous in the context of our previous exchange. It made me uncomfortable, in a vague sort of way. I could never have articulated it. But I decided it was probably related to not driving. “Do you have anything in here to listen to?” I said, trying to distract myself.

“There are some cassettes in the glovebox,” Louis said. “Put on anything you’d like.”

 

That hadn’t, I realized, been entirely what I had meant. The Chevette seemed so foreign suddenly, now that I was aware that I was a passenger. It was such a completely alien space that he might have listened to anything, and I didn’t know how to choose. I was capable of asking him, of course, but I wasn’t sure how to phrase the question.

“I want some rock music,” I said, “or some Mozart. Since we’re dating. You really ought to entertain me.”

 

Louis gave a short, low laugh. “I don’t know what’s in there. Most of it was obtained in a similar manner as you’ve come by your glasses.”

“Impulse purchases? That’s very unlike you. I didn’t realize you shopped for music.”

“Occasionally,” he said. “Just occasionally. Once I had a car stereo it seemed appropriate. There’s plenty of Springsteen. Gas stations always have Springsteen.”

 

“It’s because he sings about cars,” I said, opening the glovebox. I’d seen Springsteen perform once or twice, impressed by both his energy and his ability to wear a pair of blue-jeans as though they were nakedness.  It seemed important at the time, I recalled, when I was figuring out how to be popular, how to make myself famous, to assimilate all of these things. Sex. Sex particularly. It’s like religion, it sells. But I pushed that memory aside with the cassettes. It wasn’t appropriate here. “Oh look, _Nebraska_. You’ve even got his four-track album.”

“I started listening to him after one of the magazines placed him in context with you,” Louis said. “I’m not sure about the comparison. In some ways, I suppose. But I did appreciate the lead.”

 

“I’m not sure about the comparison either,” I said, honestly. How strange to be reminded of that, slipping out of the present and all the way back to 1985, when I’d first heard this album ( _Nebraska_ was, of course, released in 1982, but being indisposed at the time, I hadn’t got to it until later). In reality, 1985 was far closer in time than a lot of things I remembered, but it seemed far further away. Strange, that there are threads to everything, and multiple points of connection.

“We’ve got a vaguely similar vocal range I guess,” I said, “but stylistically we’re miles apart. Do you think I should do a four-track album? I’m kind of thinking about it.”

“I think it was less about style,” Louis said. “And more about…ah, well.”

 

For a moment I was completely confused. Besides style and singing, there seemed not much else by which comparison might be made. But then I noticed Louis’ particular silence, the minute tightening of his hands at the wheel. And I understood.

“Louis,” I said, carefully, “do you have a thing for Bruce Springsteen?”

 

He flinched. Visibly. As if he hadn’t listened to ‘Born to Run’ and been delighted at the invitation to strap his hands across Springsteen’s engine. Perhaps it was to the good, the fact that he hadn’t immediately understood all the levels at which I would be violating his privacy by getting into his car, or I might not be here now. I’d heard a little absence in his speech, just a momentary pause, and because it was Louis, because I had known him ever since he was human, that was enough for me to unpack this, one of his most secret possessions, one of his own real thoughts. What an adorable, predictable monster he was, what an sweet combination of idealism and self-flagellating dirtiness. Listening to his cassettes, driving around like a teenager.

 

Louis demurred but he needn’t have bothered. His feelings were that obvious. How I loved this awkward propriety. He seemed a creature from another time and I couldn’t resist picking at it.

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “With those thigh muscles and all that leaping about. I’d put it to him in a heartbeat. If I could, I mean. It’s not even a question.”

 

Louis shot me a sideways glance. I felt a little bad. I had the kind of childish remorse a person ought to get from doing such a petty cruelty. I didn’t stop, though. “Think of it! Long, engaging discussions about American class politics followed by fucking like animals in a puddle of blue-collar sweat!” I said. “That’s perfect for you! That’s basically the ideal Louis fantasy. You have to tell me…” I’d started to say. But it congealed in my mouth as I registered his expression. He was absolutely serious, serious enough that my heart hit my throat, bringing with it with it a momentary nausea.

“I’ll tell you mine if you like,” I said, quickly. But he didn’t answer.

 

The air in the Chevette had seemed to coalesce against me then. It was apparent – oh so horribly apparent – that the conversation had become Not Banter. Louis’ face had abruptly tilted it out of that, and we were in some other perilous place now. Things were on fire. Things were collapsing into the sea. I was not prepared for it. At all. I raised an eyebrow at him, above the glasses, but he didn’t fold to it. I don’t know whether he did that on purpose or didn’t, but he was as motionless as he could be while still driving.

“Louis,” I said, “explicitness is the natural enemy of romance.”

 

I wondered if he wanted to look at me, if driving required that he look away, or whether he was not looking at me on purpose. Louis is a reasonable driver – not reckless, but he doesn’t seem to derive any particular pleasure from it either. His hair fell over his face again and he pushed it back, carelessly.

“I’ll grant you that,” he said. “It’s just that that’s somewhat dysfunctional as a relationship modus operandi.”

“Yes, of course it is,” I said. “We’re creatures of the night, Louis. Of course it’s dysfunctional, what do you expect? You’ve got to leave it alone and let it be dysfunctional.”

 

Louis frowned. “I think that would be in some opposition to our recent efforts, don’t you?”

“Fuck our recent efforts,” I said. “I do that to please you, and now that you’re bludgeoning date night to death with this ham-fisted Not Flirting, I flatly regret it.”

 

Oh God! You’ll forgive me for saying that. I know, I promise, I would have known even then, that I was being appalling. But I also knew that I couldn’t do much about it. What a singular cruelty, to imprison me in a moving vehicle and do this to me. To look and smell the way he did, and to play with me as if it were safe when it wasn’t. It was disorienting, like a sudden vertigo. And it was his own fucking fault, so you can’t blame me for it.

“You don’t mean that,” he said.

“Don’t tell me what I mean, Louis. I know what I mean.”

 

Louis took another breath. I could see him measuring himself, evaluating. That, at least, was familiar. I had made him angry – I was trying to make him angry – and he was deciding whether or not that was reasonable of me.

“Let me try that again,” he said, evenly. “In spite of your manner, I would like to continue seeing each other, if that’s amenable to you.”

“What, like dating?”

“Yes, like dating.”

“We’re dating now.”

“Yes,” he said. “We’re dating now. Would you like to keep dating?”

“I don’t know, it depends on how this turns out.”

“Alright,” he said, “I suppose that’s fair.”

 

Of course it’s fair, I thought. _This_ is what’s unfair. I wanted to tell him that. That this, suddenly, was not safe. I almost did. But I wasn’t sure how he’d answer. Would he tell me that it was stupid? That I’d still been wrong? Would he fail to understand me and leave me flailing?

“Besides,” I said, “what could be more dysfunctional than deliberately lying to one’s therapist? That must surely win some kind of dysfunction sweepstakes. You’ve won at that too, aren’t you proud?”

“That’s true,” he said. “That’s absolutely true. And it’s tragic. It’s so stupid that I’ve even bothered with this. Dating. Dressing with intent. What’s the point of any of it?”

 

I assumed the question was rhetorical, though I did register the “dressing with intent” part. That was gratifying. Still, presented with one of Louis’ existential exercises, I’d begun to tune out. Bored, or defensively bored, which is almost the same thing. But as I watched him assemble his face again, it was almost amusing, in a gentle way, how flustered he’d become by my not-even-quite-criticism. This eased my anger a little. Don’t you read? I thought of saying. Don’t you know what you are to me? There’s no point to that, and there doesn’t need to be. But I didn’t say that either. Instead, I waited to see how he’d resolve it. In spite of myself, I wanted to know what he’d say next. Though I refused to give any indication of this. I just did my best bored face and waited.

 

And I was still waiting when, wonder of wonders, Louis began to blush. I smelt it as it happened, soft yet sharp, warm and insistent, the unmistakable smell of his own particular blood, blossoming against his skin.

“Look, I am trying to talk to you about whether we might… have… at some point… rather than simply…” he said, pink-cheeked and awkward. “You’ll forgive my incompetence. I’ve run out of banter.”

“But what…?” I started to say, and then nothing. What he meant was utterly apparent, and I felt it like a bolt of lightening. I grinned like an idiot. I don’t even have to remember that. I’ve never forgotten.

 

I did eventually realize that I’d trailed off without completing the sentence. I was shocked, I think, or struck, or something – just stopped in general, somehow essentially. I found I had to swallow to make my mouth work.

“What’s just happened?”

“You know what’s just happened. Please don’t make me say it.”

“Just spit it out, would you?”

“I am trying to talk to you about resuming a sexual relationship!” he said, flushing wildly. Then he drew back, staring at the road as if it had offended him.

  
   
I didn’t laugh. I almost did, but I thank every single Saint I didn’t. That would have been too far. What I did say was bad enough. “Are you?” I asked, in the most innocent of tones.  
   
He didn’t flinch this time, but the peri-movement of his shoulders suggested that he wanted to. He turned back to the road again, abruptly, anxiously. Veered the car away from the center-line. We’d left the highway now, and Fairhope had come up around us. But it was late. It was too late for traffic and there was no danger. It irritated me only momentarily. His visible distress was such that my heart broke for him, and I leaned towards him, putting my hand in his lap. He pushed me away quite abruptly. I started to protest his rudeness, but then I remembered that he was driving, and it was actually quite obvious that I shouldn’t be fussing at him while he was doing that. I folded my arms over my chest. He bit his bottom lip, irritated too.   
“What a disaster,” he said. “I’m sorry I invited you.”  
“Oh Louis,” I managed to say. “You have no idea. You’re so fussy, it’s just adorable.”  
   
Louis has this way of thinning his lips without moving anything else. A Victorian trick, a subtle alteration of face by which to convey supreme disapproval. As if to confirm my description of him, he did it now.  
“I wish you wouldn’t patronize me.”  
“I’m not trying to. God, were you this awkward when you were human?”  
“Forget it,” he said. “It’s not important. It doesn’t matter.”  
   
I propped my elbow against my open window. Dark. Dark and humid. The moment threatened to draw itself out, to become irreparable.  
“Chéri,” I said, “don’t be mad at me. If you’re trying to pick me up, you’ve absolutely succeeded. I am head over heels for you. I want to have sex with you so badly, you’ve got no idea.”  
“We can’t even have sex,” he said angrily. “Your vulgarity is uncalled for.”  
   
I’m not sure whether I ignored his insult or returned it. “Of course we can,” I said. “Pull over and I’ll show you.”  
“Oh mon dieu!” Louis snapped. His expression was something to behold. “You unbelievable bastard! I actually think you’re getting pleasure from this.”

And you think correctly, I thought, smugly. But what I said was, “it’s not vulgar when people love each other.”  
   
Louis looked at me then, suddenly, as if he were surprised. And just as suddenly I became aware of what I’d said. Aware and appalled. I put my hand over my mouth and examined the scenery, so it looked as if I were only shifting in my seat out of practicality, rather than painful discomfort. We’d reached the Municipal Pier by now. Moonlight on the water, and Mobile sparkling across the bay. The pier itself was lit up, as if someone might want to walk along it. Though more probably it was for boats.  
   
Louis turned onto the Park Road. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What’s just happened?”  
“Oh, fuck you, Louis,” I said, spinning round to face him. “That’s so far removed from funny it doesn’t even come to the family reunion.”  
   
I couldn’t tell if he looked guilty or affronted. He might not have meant anything by it. It was possible he’d put the words together at random, not meaning to say anything about me. But I didn’t care. I was overwhelmed by a sudden memory, of the first time I’d been to a session with Louis. The therapist had asked us both, in whatever dull phrase he’d used for it, “do you want to resume your relationship?” And I had said yes. And Louis had said, “I don’t know.” But you know now, don’t you? I thought. And I’m supposed to believe that it’s not just some kind of cruel trick, a carpet to be whipped out from under me. If nothing else, I was probably capable of starting a fight with him. A nice, comfortable fight.  
   
Louis hadn’t got angry again, though. Instead he just looked bewildered. He was still looking at the road, but he was wide-eyed, hurt and confused. Those twin sensations appeared to struggle with each other for some time before his eyes flicked back to mine in the mirror.  
“Go on, mon cher,” I said. “Do it. Blame me for everything. Make it sound like you’re helpless against some terrible accident.” I said this disdainfully. And falsely.  
 “Ah,” he said, eventually. “What?”  
   
“I am actually,” I said, “all evidence to the contrary, Louis, I am actually a person. With… well, you know, person traits. Person frailties.”  
“I know that.”  
“You don’t!” I said, and I saw him draw back a little, so I lowered my voice. “I mean it, though. I don’t think you do. You say it, but I don’t think you know it. You talk about loving me like you don’t want to. You do that quite a lot.”  
   
Louis was still watching me in the mirror, his face colored by disbelief or incredulity. I wondered what he was thinking. Not for the first time, I was painfully aware of the fact that I couldn’t read his mind. Stop looking at me like that, I wanted to say. Either that or say something, you aggravating, stubborn creature. Say anything. Not everyone is a Goddamned Zen monk. Not everyone can do conversational asceticism.  
   
“If I’m going to say it, then you have to say it too,” I said. Demanded, actually. “If we’re going to do this analysis crap at all.”  
“Are you going to say it?” he asked me. Amused. There was, I noticed, a faint undercurrent of genuine amusement in his tone when he spoke. Don’t you dare test me, I thought, so sharply that I was sure it must be audible. But I managed not to say it. I dug my fingers into my own arms to avoid saying it. To avoid the kind of movement that would give me away.  
   
But while I was thinking this, while I was watching his face, Louis took a hand from the wheel and laid it lightly over mine. It surprised me, that he’d done this before I’d noticed his moving. He was full of surprises tonight.  
“Lestat,” he said. His voice was quiet. And the way he had of saying my name was the same as it had always been. “Is it that I say it and you don’t believe me, or that I haven’t said it in the right way?”  
   
I didn’t speak. I had no idea what I was supposed to say. Both, I thought. Neither. Either way I don’t know about it. Oh God, I love you. None of the answers were right, though, and I looked away from him. But I did eventually link my fingers with his. He moved his thumb very slightly against my palm when I did this, and I felt something hot shoot through me. Something sharp, quick, mercurial, gutting me out as it went. It left my body and he took the hand away – of course, he was driving – but that little touch, that was incendiary.  
   
So much so, I thought, that it had actually managed to render me fragile, as if I’d been badly burned. I must seem like glass. He must be able to see right inside of me. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t speak because I was unable to. Louis’ hands were back on the wheel, his gaze on the road but somehow managing to imply that it contained my movements in its periphery. It was infuriating. And frightening. And anticipatory somehow. Whatever it was, this combination of thoughts and feelings, it was strange, it was too strange, and in consequence it had made me seethe as if lightly electrocuted. Louis sighed then and it was absolutely the wrong thing to do. I should have been more gracious to him, I know that, but only the barest vestige of self-restraint kept me from shoving him out of the car when he did it.  
   
“Louis,” I said, “pull over.”  
He turned his head sharply, as if he hadn’t heard me. “Excuse me?”  
“Louis,” I said, and I was bossily retreating into my natural persona now, the King of Fucking Everything. “Pull over.”  
   
I’d expected him to resist, I think. He looked at me in the mirror again, and for a moment he seemed dumbstruck like an animal, caught between horror and fascination. Then he pulled into to the reserve on the side of the Parkway and stopped the car. The Chevette shuddered when he put the break on, and it clunked audibly as it settled. A Chevette is a terrible car, it really is, but the fact that it was Louis’ Chevette made me love it a little. I still ached to fix it, to tidy it up, or to simply drive it over a cliff and buy him another car, but at the same time the Chevette seemed to take on a kind of personality as it stilled. A loveable simpleton. The Little Chevette That Could. Or something.  
   
So I closed my eyes and opened them again. I could see the water through the trees from the reserve. The beach must have been meters away. I thought we’d get out later, walk along it. I liked the thought of that. We’d hold hands. Nobody would be around, and he’d let me. He’d folded his hands into his lap, and he wasn’t looking at me, and maybe that’s what made me think of it. He, too, might have been looking out over the water, might have been thinking of what it would feel like to walk beside. But he didn’t speak. Aside from the sound of protesting, contracting metal, things were conspicuously silent. Happily, however, there is no moment so serious I cannot invalidate it with cynicism.  
   
“If you really loved me you’d let me go all the way,” I said, both relishing the cruelty and regretting it instantly. Yet Louis didn’t seem to register my crack as that kind of comment. He looked off beyond the car, appearing as if he were somewhere else entirely, only barely able to hear me. Then he looked at his hands. His neatly folded hands. So graceful. So refined.  
“I will,” he said. “I just have to think about it, I suppose.”  
   
Those were his actual words. That’s actually what Louis said. It’s probably ridiculous to point out to you that this was exactly the last sentence I had expected him to say, or to tell you that I was completely stopped by it, again. But I have done, and I was; completely and utterly stopped. Oh shit! I’d thought. Oh Merciful Fucking Mother of God, _say something, Lestat! Now!_ I’d felt that, bursting under my tongue in exactly those words. But there was no advice as to what it would have been and I felt as painfully imbecilic as I had when he’d touched my hand. So I said nothing. Well, I said, “what?” but it wasn’t enough, and he didn’t answer.  
   
I didn’t think he was going to. He’d slipped away from me, Louis. I could actually see it happening on his face, a gradual tilt towards despair, as if there were simply too many things to consider. And they were all frightening to him, they were all overwhelming. I so wanted to touch him, but it was all too apparent from the way he was sitting that he would not have welcomed it.  
“To separate my reactions from their root cause,” he continued, the first part of that sentence presumably lost in his own head. “I don’t wonder if… two hundred years of not… doing those things is long enough to be quite habit forming. And I don’t… I wonder which part is the habit and which part is…”  
   
“Of your own volition,” I said, and his attention jumped back to me, momentarily startled that I was still there. I had forgotten this about him, the way his intellectual track, once initiated, would simply keep running until he ran himself aground. But I remembered it now. I was, I realized, though I scarcely had the benevolence to account for it at the time, lucky it had continued audibly. I waited.  
“It’s just…that…” he said. And then he was silent again. He put a hand over his face.  
   
I held out as long as I could. “Louis…”  
He was blushing again, unable to look at me. The smell of it had filled up the car, but I – somehow – kept myself still in spite of this. His shoulders were pulled forward as if his body were collapsing into itself. “Louis?” I said again.

  
Louis did not look up. “It makes me… somewhat uncomfortable.”  
“Oh,” I said. It was all I was capable of. There weren’t any other words. Oh, darling, I wanted to say.  
“Look,” he said, “it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”  
   
“I do,” I said, suddenly.  
“Well, I don’t,” Louis said. “But I do want to apologize for what I’ve apparently said to you.”  
“But I’m very proud of you.”   
   
He turned toward me then. His eyes were luminous in his white face. “What an odd thing to say.”  
“It’s a break-through, though,” I said.  “Isn’t it? I mean, given you… given what you used to… Be sure and tell the therapist. I bet it’s significant.”  
“But we’re not supposed to be seeing each other. I hadn’t planned to tell him anything.”  
“I think, mon petit,” I said, “that the situation is a little different now, don’t you? Since we’re lovers.”  
   
There was, as they say, a pause. Louis looked at his hands again. I almost took one, but I didn’t. How could he be so still? How on earth could he do that? As if he were dead. Then, slowly, and I hadn’t even known I’d been waiting for it, he unfolded a thin, awkward smile.  Above it, his eyes took on a look of apparent wonderment.  
“You don’t even sound scathing,” he said. “Mon dieu, is that all it takes? A few words to you about… this… and you’re as docile as a lamb?”  
   
But how could it have been that I didn’t sound scathing? I had meant to. That and the fact that he still couldn’t say the word threatened to make me laugh again, but it was a tenuous feeling, and his hand was on my forearm now, I noticed, though again I hadn’t noticed him move. It was tight, insistent, but from his face it seemed he’d done it reflexively, as if he himself hadn't noticed it either. I put my own hand over it. He flinched.  
“Not now,” he said. His voice was very quiet. “Not in a car. I don’t think…I don’t think yet.”  
   
I didn’t want to be hurt. It felt selfish. I was, though. Not because I didn’t deserve that assumption, but because I did. “Louis, I wasn’t going to… shit. I know not yet.”  
I took my hand away, but he grabbed it in mid-movement. His hand was warm, living. But he’d been with me the entire evening and he couldn’t have fed, so perhaps I only imagined that. Still, that's how I remember it.  
“Oh no, please,” he said. “I didn’t mean that you should… It’s so cruel. Starting, and stopping, and making you do… I’m so very… won’t you please forgive me?”  
   
All I could do was stare at him. He was serious. He absolutely was. “Two hundred years old, and a prude,” he said. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, and yet absolutely unchangeable.”  
“It’s not unchangeable. It’s already changed, hasn’t it? You’d never have said… what you said to me.”  
“I see it’s infectious,” he said, woefully. “I am so sorry for this. For you. For myself. It’s just… a lot of cringing apology. And the disaster. I’m sorry about that. I should have let you talk about Springsteen.”  
   
I did laugh then. It was impossible not to. His tone, and particularly his face, a sad little shrug, made him seem like a parody of himself. At the same time he seemed utterly without artifice, strikingly inarticulate, but the expression was so profoundly Louis-ish that it struck me as funny. Then a look of hurt, or possibly disdain, flashed across his face and I felt awful.  
   
“Sorry,” I said. “Mon cher, I’m just… I promise I’m not trying to make fun of you.”  
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. And just like that, the hand had dropped from mine. “You’re right, of course. Explicitness is the natural enemy of romance. I’ll drive you back to the city now.”  
   
“Louis!” I said, and then I stopped again. How unbelievably frustrating that I had to use words with him! Speech was just so inadequate. “Goddamn, Louis! I say garbage like that because I’m an idiot. You shouldn’t listen to me.”  
“I’ll always listen to you. I could hear your voice in my sleep. You must know that by now.”  
“But why do you…”  
He looked up suddenly, his eyes shimmering. Like he might cry. I hoped he wouldn’t. I didn’t know if I could stand it.  
“You know,” he said. “Don’t you know?”  
   
I don’t know if I knew. I don’t know anything. All I know is that his lip trembled and then something happened in me so that the only thing I could think to do was to pull him towards me, urgently. His slight body, however stubborn, however strong, came easily and I held him there. Whether it was he shaking or I, I don’t know either. The movement was so full with sensation I don’t know how to begin translating it. I just held him. I don’t know how long that lasted for. We were holding each other, really, for his hand was pressed against my back now, almost grasping at me.  
   
What I can tell you for certain is that I’d ceased to hear anything. There were no sounds from the car anymore, and nothing outside – if there was movement from the road I didn’t notice, nothing penetrated. Only the sounds of our adolescent clinging, of the brush of clothing against the seats, of breathing. His hand moved very slightly on my arm, our heads were together, our temples touching. My hand against his sweater, moving the fabric over his skin. And then, the softest of all possible pressures, the gentle insistence of his lips against mine.  
   
In all honesty I have no idea who initiated it. All of those things, intent, design, they’d fallen away, replaced by a strange inertia, as if there was nothing else we could have done. We moved apart, but not really. Hands together now, his head still inches from mine. Close enough that his every breath was magnified. You know you’re very precious to me, I thought, but didn’t say. You must know, darling. You must know. Such tiny sparks of feeling, so bright. I kissed him again, or he kissed me. And then, suddenly, startlingly, Louis laughed.   
   
The sound of it was so abrupt in contrast to all of this tenderness that I wanted to cry. “What?” I demanded, not saying what I would have said: so help me, you unbelievable asshole, this had better be good. This was so close to happening that it seemed as if it already had. But he was pushing the glasses back over my hair, and it stalled me. He laid his face against mine.  
“Those damned glasses,” he said, just above my ear. “Plastic. Such a ridiculous thing.”  
I might have protested that too, if he hadn’t been brushing his hand over my cheek with such fondness that I forgave him totally. His fingers curled against my neck, and there was nothing I could possibly do but forgive him. “It’s democratic,” I said, stupidly.  
   
He smiled at that. I could feel it. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “A plastic democracy. My tawdry, materialist friend, how I’ve missed you.”  
   
It occurs to me now, writing those words down for you in a time far removed from their occurrence, that Louis had actually intended to insult me on some deep, philosophical level by saying that. Shit, I would have known that even then, I’m almost sure of it. But let’s be frank about this, you and I. The shape of his speech was like poetry and I could feel the movement of his cheeks against my face, so soft, so very alive, and I’d pulled him tighter, and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing existed but him. His body, his sweetness, his smell, especially his smell. That movement, that pulling him, it was awkward, physically uncomfortable, but I scarcely cared about that either. If he was my lover again – and he was, and I could feel it, and I had felt it coming the moment he asked me to get into his car outside of the doctor’s office – if he was my lover again, then what in the hell did it matter what he talked about? Sure, sex took us longer – it’s funny, you know, in that book, in _A to B and Back Again_ , Andy has this to say about sex: “after being alive, the next hardest work is having sex” – but those kisses I will remember until I really die.  
   
So I want you to forgive me for what I’d forgotten. You will forgive me, though. You won’t be able to help it. What I’ve described is so blissfully romantic, who cares about anything else? About an hour before dawn, Louis had dropped me at my car with the sweetest goodbye of my un-life, resolving the decision of whether or not I should try to drive back to Blackwood for yet another night, and I’m supposed to remember an oil spill? I had stayed here because I was in love with him, fallen asleep with the plastic glasses still pushed up over my hair because I’d forgotten to take them off, and it really was that simple. Something had been cemented in Fairhope, and far more surely than the oil well had been by Halliburton. But things have happened since then – you have to know that by now, don’t you? An oilrig was on _fire._ That’s surely some kind of foreshadowing.  
   
And the sunglasses, of course. They’re foreshadowing too. The new plastic sunglasses that I bought on the first night of the disaster. I ought to tell you what happened to them. And I want to tell you the truth, I do. It’s just difficult. If I think of it like confession, perhaps – unwelcome in a real church now, really, really unwelcome, though whether because of myself or because of external forces I do not know - perhaps I’ll make my confessions to you. And you’ll listen, of course. And you’ll forgive me. You have to. You already have. Your sympathies are with me already.  
   
It’ll be easy for you to forgive me, in full, for the fact that in conscious exercise of my rights as an honorary citizen in a consumerist democracy (I pay taxes. Well, I pay sales tax), I bought new plastic sunglasses on the night of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The second biggest environmental disaster in United States History, second only to the Dust Bowl, and I bought plastic sunglasses, and I didn’t know that it meant anything, or was going to mean anything, in the context of my relationship with Louis. But it did. And I should have known that. But I broke them exactly one week later, on the night of our first session after we’d started “doing it.”

 

I remember it because the therapist called it a delayed shock reaction. He wouldn’t let me drive home, and Louis had to. That’s a portent, perhaps, or an extrapolation of events that had been, in that it’s one of very few other times that Louis drove me somewhere.  Though you’ll have to take the therapist’s word on what happened, since to me it seemed that I had only shattered the glasses as I was putting them on.  
   
I mean, look, they were plastic and I, with the kind of physical strength I have, it’s easy to see how I could have broken them by simple accident. There’s no need for psychoanalysis of that. Sometimes with this kind of preternatural ability, an error in movement is just an error in movement. Though it’s true I didn’t know what to do about it. I’ll admit that, that I might be absolved of it. I just stood there looking at the glasses in pieces on the floor - “I liked those,” I said, or would have said, as if there was nothing before the event and nothing to do after. I do remember that, and I suppose I should admit it.  
   
I should also admit that I was dimly aware of Louis having put his hand on my arm, as if to steady me, and that he appeared to have done so by reflex, not noticing how he was touching me and what it was doing. But I couldn’t see his face, so his hand was, aside from the broken glasses, the only real thing in the world. I was frozen there in such a strange way. As if all time was this moment, as if the limits of my body were absolute, as if the air in the therapist’s office had coalesced against me. So maybe there’s something in it. I don’t entirely know.  
Though I do know that I have to tell you about it. I honestly don’t know why that is. Confession, I suppose. That’s something of the nature of confession. We left the office, and we walked to the car, which is probably not interesting to hear about. But you’ll forgive me for that too.  
   
I protested, though, I think. I didn’t like his attitude, I didn’t want him to drive my car, he didn’t know what he was doing, I wished he wouldn’t touch me. And Louis ignored me. He ignored all of it. He just put me in the car and drove home, and in retrospect it was rather impressive, given his general reticence to do anything, ever. Maybe that’s interesting after all. It is, at least, different.  
“Can you tell me what happened?” he said, when we were, I think, on Government Street, and he was looking at me in the mirror. But I didn’t answer, and I continued not answering until he sighed.  
   
Louis sighs portentously sometimes, and he did it then, in the same, familiar manner that he always has. In this context familiarity was not charming. It is (this sigh) his substitute for almost all speech, and I felt my entire body tense when he did it. Some kind of crawling, evil indignation, a nausea of violence, pressing threateningly at the insides of my skin. I rolled my eyes.  
“I broke some glasses.”  
“I see,” he said, but it was apparent he didn’t.   
“Don’t look at me like that!” I snapped. “There’s nothing wrong with me. You don’t have to believe everything the therapist tells you.”  
   
Louis sighed a second time. It literally made me tremble. Once more and I’d rip him open. I would take him apart. I wondered if he knew that. Probably. But he took a hand from the wheel and laid it over mine, and I grabbed his fingers reflexively, as if they would save me from drowning.  
“Goddamn it, Louis, be careful!” I said. “It’s a Porsche, not a fucking Chevette.”  
   
He said nothing, though he did disentangle his hand from mine and place it back on the wheel. He turned. We were turning. I didn’t know where we were anymore, I wasn’t paying attention. Noticing this made me sickeningly disoriented, like a sudden vertigo, until I recognized the McDonald’s restaurant and the city aligned again. I didn’t think of it then, because I hadn’t read it then, but I think of it now; that according to Andy Warhol, Mobile was beautiful because of the McDonald’s. “The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet.”  
“Louis,” I said, “you have to trust me. It was a momentary aberration. So I broke some sunglasses.”  
  
He was silent still. But he was expressively silent, and it was more than a little irritating.   
“Louis,” I said, again, putting my hand on his thigh, resting it there momentarily before sliding it towards him. His eyes widened in obvious shock. “Listen to me.”  
   
Louis shifted against my hand, attempting to push it off, but I held myself there, firmly. I slid over a little, until he couldn’t remove me without losing control of the car. He tried though. Futile as it was, this little tussle went on for blocks until finally he gritted his teeth and jerked back into the seat defeated. I grinned. Or smirked. It's confession. Smirked may be closer to the truth  
“Listen to me when I tell you…” I began to say, moving the hand a little. Such a fine thigh.   
“I am listening,” he said, sharply.  “I’ve been listening the entire time. Are you listening to me?”  
  
It would help if you'd fucking say something, I thought. But what I said was, “don’t be angry, chéri.”  
“I’m not angry,” Louis said. “I’m frustrated. There’s a significant difference.” He pushed against me again, but I held fast.  
“Well, don’t be frustrated,” I said, slipping my thumb into the waistband of his pants. He flinched, his expression somewhere between startled and furious.  
“That’s not…" he said. "That’s really not appropriate. Please don’t do that.”  
“But why?”  
“You know why,” he said. And of course I did. I knew exactly why. But I didn’t remove my hand. It was essential to the performance that I didn’t. And that I lean back in the seat as if I owned it. Which I did, actually, since it was my Porsche. Louis shot me a look but I couldn’t quite read it - I couldn’t quite tell if he believed me. I raised an eyebrow in response, keeping my hand absolutely still.  
  
We had reached the flat by now and Louis turned the Porsche into the driveway. He might have been careless with his own things, but he never was with mine, and I noticed this now. Even with me distracting him with impotent, undirected rage and confusion, even with my hand where it was, his body tense underneath it, he changed gears like he was petting a little cat, looked back out onto the road with real attention. When he made to slide the gear-stick into its park position, he did so as if it were a lover’s hand. I had no idea how he could be so gentle with it under the circumstances. The car inched forward and then stopped.  
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but this is really… would you please take your hand out of my pants?”  
   
It shouldn’t shock you, what I did next. You should know that by now, what a monster I am. You’ve been paying attention, so you know what I did - the exact opposite of what he asked me to do. I shoved my hand further in, closer to his body, and I pushed up against him. I heard him breathe sharply when I did it. I couldn’t tell if it was arousal or fear, but I didn’t care. No. No, I’m lying. That isn’t the truth, and this is confession, and it should be the truth. So I’ll tell you. I did care. I wanted him to be frightened. Romantic, charming Disaster Night Lestat, the one who would have waited for him, that was somebody else.  
   
Here, Louis’ body was rigid. I wondered, briefly, if he felt as dislocated as I had in his rigidity. If this frozenness I could feel in him was like mine, if it cut him off and came with some of the same mental accoutrements. I didn’t ask him though. I just kept my hand where it was, moving my thumb ever so slightly. And he shuddered. That was when I knew that I, really, was the one in the driver’s seat now.  
“Please,” he said.  
“Get out of my car,” I told him. He did it wordlessly.  
   
I got out too and followed him to the flat. As he opened the door, as I walked in behind him, I addressed him again, “tell me you want me to,” I said, and he spun on his heel.  
“What?” Distracted. He shouldn’t be distracted. He put the Porsche keys on the sideboard and he shouldn’t have done that either. He should have given them back to me. They were my keys. That little action, that was infuriating.  
   
“That you can’t be without me,” I said.  “That you want me to…”  
The door was still open. He closed it, I suppose guessing I wasn’t going to. I’d forgotten about the door. You’ll forgive me for that too.  
“But why are you asking me this?” he said.  
   
I didn’t answer. Instead I moved. Faster than sound, I shoved him against the wall, slicing into his neck with my fingernails, tilting his chin back with my thumb. I put my mouth against the wound and he inhaled sharply once again. He was afraid now. He had to be afraid.  
“Tell me you want this,” I said. He said nothing.  
   
Instead he regarded me steadily, evaluating me as if he was unmoved by the fresh blood pooling at his collar-bone. I couldn’t bring myself to drink it, not while he made that face. The smell of him in my throat was threatening to overpower me, and so I became threatening too. Tightened my hand. Pushed him backwards. I heard him wince. So delicate. A breakable beast.  
   
“Tell me, Louis,” I said. And some desperation had entered my voice, and I suppose he heard it.  
“I want it,” he said, his face disorienting, his hand on my back, his body against mine.  
 “Because you love me,” I said. “Say it.”  
   
“Yes,” he said, his voice strained by the pressure I was putting on it. “Yes, of course I love you.” His fingers were tighter now. He was grasping at me. I held him there for less than a minute, and then I released my hand and let him go. He brought his own hand to his throat and held it there, lightly, looking at me in startled disbelief.  
“You’re such a strange…” he said, but he never finished the sentence. “I don’t know what you…”  
“You shouldn’t drive my car,” I said. And Louis blinked.  
“Excuse me?”  
“It’s my car.”  
   
Shit, had I really said that to him? Had I really implied that that mattered? But it did matter, it was my car, and that mattered, it mattered in a way I couldn’t tell him about. This fluttering urgency, this unnamable terror.  
“Louis,” I said, and my voice. My voice made no sense to me. “Louis, it’s my car.”  
   
But he’d started to touch my face then, in a way that I didn’t understand. It was tender, as gentle as he’d been with the gear-stick, as gentle as when he’d pushed the plastic glasses up over my hair on the Park Road in Fairhope, and how I remembered that now. I had no idea why. Hadn’t I hurt him? Wasn’t he afraid of me? But his expression seemed purely concerned, as if he were frightened _for_ me. He pulled closer to me then, as if he were seeking my protection, and it was striking. His body was so slight, something I could never avoid noticing when he hugged me like this. Tightly. I was rigid enough to let him.  
“I know,” he said. “Of course I know it’s your car. Lestat… I know it’s your car.”  
   
Something was digging into my hip, so I wriggled away from him. He protested – I think he thought I was just pushing him off to be contrary, to continue my charade of angry independence. I wasn’t, though. I was genuinely uncomfortable, and I quickly found out why: the broken plastic glasses were in his coat pocket. I extracted them and held them out in front of my face. How petty they seemed, in the context of what they had initiated.  
   
Louis had leaned forward as I was doing this. His expression seemed discontinuous with the rest of him, with his disheveled hair, his ruffled, bloody shirt, his untucked underthings. All of this had happened to him since he’d left the Porsche. So easy to ruin him. Yet he looked as if things were very serious. This didn’t, I felt, reflect my requirements, and I threw the glasses against the floor.  
“Fuck it,” I said. “Plastic garbage. None of it matters.”  
What a measurement of tone this took, what effort to sound like I wasn’t making any. I turned back to him and smiled. And Louis took me at my performance, I thought.  
   
Or perhaps not. Really, he didn’t seem to register me at all, or what I was doing. His serious face wasn’t made at me, but at the glasses. He had curled a finger against his mouth, a gesture that on anybody else would have seemed affected. As quiet as he was, his stillness made him seem dead. But then he moved, ever so slightly, and the spell was broken.  
“Deepwater Horizon,” he said. “It’s a spill now.”  
I stared at him. “What in holy hell, Louis? Why the fuck are you bringing that up?”  
   
Louis, meanwhile, was still looking at the glasses. His hand at my back sat there lightly, as if he’d forgotten it was there, as if I were no longer real to him. You _promised_ , I thought.  But it didn’t do any good. “Plastic,” he said. “It’s a petroleum by-product.”  
   
I dare you to tell me I should have said something. If I’d known then, I would have told him about Coca-Cola. I would have told him what Andy said about art – “an artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he, for some reason, thinks it would be a good idea to give them.” I would have told him that he couldn’t think this, that he had to stop thinking it, because some part of me was really connected to it, was caught up in that plasticity, in that disaster. Andy understood that, he understood how important it was, though I wouldn’t know that until months later. “In some circles,” he wrote, “where very heavy people think they have very heavy brains, words like "charming" and "clever" and "pretty" are all put-downs; all the lighter things in life, which are the most important things, are put down.”  
   
But I didn’t say it. Louis wouldn’t give me that book for months, and I didn’t have the words for it. Just a sick, uncomfortable, dissonant fury. Driving my fucking Porsche and not even having sex with me. You’ll forgive me that dishonesty, though. Of course you will. I paid my dollar. I wanted my Coke.

 


	6. The Proverbial Ledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bitter argument, via email. Tendencies are revealed.

The Proverbial Ledge 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Registration

Bonsoir bébé,

Attached are the registration docs you wanted. They’re full scans (electronic reproductions) so just download (click on the little image of a paperclip with your mouse cursor and then you should receive a series of bijou boxed prompts to follow) and print. Do you have a printer? If not, tell me and I’ll use snail mail.

There’s also a little box of your things that I’ll bring to session. No reason that shouldn’t be amicable.

x

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Registration

Thank you for that.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: Registration

>>Thank you for that.  
How about fuck you for THAT?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: Registration

Ah! I dispatched that without thinking. I’ve become habituated to this, I think. I do apologize.

How are you?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: Registration

Okay. Not heard about the book. Maybe you could give me some of those notes you keep promising?

You, meanwhile, have started writing for the Press-Register again. New name but that tone is rather unmistakable.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: Registration

What did you think of the piece?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Didn’t hate it.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

High praise indeed.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I can’t claim to be especially fascinated by Royal Dutch Shell, Louis. However, the context is historically interesting and the writing is good. It has most of your usual tics, but on the whole you have some skill in capturing aura. How’s that?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Aura in the Benjaminian sense?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

>>Aura in the Benjaminian sense?  
Jokes about art theory are not really jokes, chéri, just tragic displays of intellectual posturing. But Google says that discussion of aura in the digital age can be had as the discussion of space within the work, so sure, why not? (Though if we’re going to be assholes, you wouldn’t “capture” so much as “produce,” would you?) The point I meant to make was this: you’re good at atmosphere. But then, you’re good at atmosphere.

In fact, your writing is characterized by what I, in the rare moments I spend thinking of it, tend to contemplate as the “flat flourish.” This is where everything is unbearably beautiful and florid but at the same time, everything is smoothed over like putty, as if it were all equivalently unimpressive, as if all that beauty were just for shallow show and you saw right though it. That’s your own “unreliable narrator,” as it were, his gaze sliding over the world in implicit, hidden judgment. To a certain extent, that works rather well here, given the subject matter. But it is also rather fucking depressing if you want my honest opinion, as I’m sure you don’t.

You’re also funny, though sometimes I wonder if anybody knows that but me.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I suppose you consider that a failing.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Oh, you’re fishing. How I love you, Monsieur I-don’t-give-a-crap-what-you-think-but-actually-I-do. Did I tell you that I went to this thing the other week, and everybody was so insubstantial? What kind of conversation is it, when the words actually mean what they purport to be? I was horribly bored. You can’t imagine how I suffered, understanding what was said to me so explicitly and simply. In recognition of your absence on that tedious occasion, here is your fish:

Viz your writing, those occasional dry asides (and they are very, very dry. They are dry as a desert, dry as a desiccated corpse) do add something to all that dreary, soaking misery. Little singed edges to your work, or something – I intend my metaphor to be taken very literally here, can you tell? The quips are good. The quip about trade was particularly good. You’d be rather insufferable without them.

I wish you’d write poems, though. That’s what I was thinking the whole time: where are his poems, what happened to them? Once upon a time, when you used to write them all the time, and you’d be so precious about it, and sometimes I’d find them or steal them, because you’d never show them to me of your own free will - do you remember that? It’s very vivid to me. You were the perfect, clichéd image of somebody who ought to have been writing poetry then, all Byronic whiteness and refined fabrics and your tortured expression. It was so easy to be cruel to you. It was so easy to be merciless. It hurt you so much and I was always sorry. I don’t regret that exactly or doubtless I would have stopped doing it, but I do miss you awfully whenever I think about it. Under such circumstances, what a tragic recollection! We were essential to each other once, even in hatred.

Still, ça n'a pas d'importance. I did love you, Louis. I loved your frailty and your pretension and your graciousness. I loved your anxiousness and your misery and your guarded repression. I think of you sometimes when I’m very lonely. And you’re not a terrible writer, darling. You’re not a great one, but you’re not terrible either.

Satisfied? Apply these synthetic kisses wherever you choose. xx

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I have promised some more, so perhaps I’ll take your comments under advisement. I do appreciate your input. Thank you for the documents.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Did I hurt your feelings? It’s only criticism. Be a man, won’t you?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Hello?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

LOUIS.

Will you please let me know you’re alright?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I’m not alright. In the wreckage of this distribution of property, there is only a searing, burning emptiness, a physical recollection of this collapse, and it is worse than death. This facile civility does nothing to salve that hurt, and I haven’t the tenacity to play with it as you do. It's not a performance. I miss you a great deal, and that’s very painful right now.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Louis, don’t. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for me too, but this veneer is one of extreme functionality under the circumstances, and I need you to help me maintain it. Be strong for me, won’t you?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I can’t. I’m simply not capable. I am weak and stupid and ashamed and I don’t care about the rest anymore. I love you. I can’t pretend I don’t. I’ll come home now, if I may.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Please don’t do this. I can’t be responsible for you, it will drive us both insane. You made a decision, and you know that when you come to your senses, you’ll be angry with me for acceding to your moment of weakness. Please don't make me be the sane one. I'm not very good at it.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Don’t you hear me? I redact every previous statement. They were nothing but stubborn pride. I throw myself at your mercy. I’ll pointlessly apologize. I’ll do that until death. That is no reason for you to forgive me; I am an imbecile and a coward, and I do not deserve the breath I draw, but I cannot live without you and I was a fool to think that I could. Please let me come.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Read very carefully, darling: that isn’t true. None of those things are true. What is true is that you are unhappy, and you are doing the thing you do when you’re unhappy – you are making the situation impassable, because you don’t know how to see it another way. But remember King Solomon. You’re stronger than this.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

But I’m not! I never was! Don’t you know me at all? What you’re trying to tell me is that you don’t want it. That is the truth here. You never did. Be honest with me now. You’ll joke about loving me, but you’ll only joke, and I am stupid enough to believe it.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Oh, mon cher. Mon chéri précieuses. I want it more than I can say. If I believed that what you were writing to me was anything more than momentary regret blown out of all proportion by your tender, romantic nature, I would be there to collect you before you had closed this message. But I don’t believe it, and neither do you. And I can’t have you come and let you blame me for it later. I don’t have that kind of strength anymore. Take pity on me, won’t you?

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

How could I ever blame you for anything, when I love you as I do?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

… he says, as if in total ignorance of the last TWO HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS.

How on earth do you imagine the future any differently? Are you privy to some Heavenly knowledge that I am not? FUCKING WHAT LOUIS.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

What is the point to clairvoyance when there is so much future to predict? I can’t tell you what will happen, I can only tell you how I feel.

I love you now. All else is uncertainty, but surely that’s all that matters?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Oh for fuck’s sake. If you won’t predict the future then I will. We’ll do “romance” for some unspecified period of time, and then suddenly I will magically become a terrible fucking person who’s ruined your Goddamned un-life and we’re right back here sending bitter emails to each other and crying over the stupid past. I hate you so much for this, Louis, this complete accedence to some kind of unpredictable universe, this pathological dependence on fate, this absolute inability to choose. Would it kill you to be certain about something for once in your fucking life? Certainty is rather fucking important right now, wouldn’t you say? GOD I HATE YOU.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Do you see the value in facile civility now?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Louis?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Louis, I can’t do this. Tell me you’re alright.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I assumed you preferred not to be contacted any further.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I obviously didn’t mean it. Come home.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I’ll let you know about the documents.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Please don’t cry. Please don’t. Of course I want you to come home. There’s never been any question.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I’m coming there. Wait for me.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

I’d really rather you didn’t.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

And I’d really rather I’d never fucking met you, you manipulative son of a bitch. I love you. Forever. Are you happy now? Burn in Hell.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Registration

Too late.


	7. Count Mercury Goes to the Suburbs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a very long chapter containing a fight and some sex and an unseemly amount of references to Woody Allen.

Count Mercury Goes To The Suburbs 

  
If I may be frank with you, dearest, I have wondered if the purely aesthetic senses a vampire possesses are adequate to the task at hand here, to transcribing such events as these with any semblance of meaningful trenchancy. I will tend to see things in Technicolor, and the situation between us might better be painted in grey. Still, as they say, needs must. There’s no-one else to tell this story, except Louis and you really don’t want to hear his version. An author’s perception influences their tale already, of course, but none will do so quite so much as a skewed perception further compounded by immense sexual frustration and visceral, gaping resentments. The kinds of resentments which are only possible when people have known each other as long as Louis and I have.

  
But I’m not trying to depress you. No, we’ll have fun tonight. You’ll be pleased. Just FYI, darlings, just one thing: this chapter is about fucking.  
   
I know I’ve told you this already, that this story was about sex. It’s just that I feel I should address it specifically here, as this chapter, specifically is not just about sex but about actual fucking. No Deepwater Horizon, some conversation, but even that is almost exclusively about fucking, and then some actual fucking later in the piece. More specifically, this chapter is about the night one night prior to the concluding scenes of the Date Night chapter, when I woke up with my hand underneath Louis’ shirt, and eventually some fucking came of it. Though possibly that description is rather more linguistically complex than that sentence would seem to imply.  
   
Oh, I know. It’s cruel, what I’m doing to you. Putting all the cards on the table like that, and then snatching them away from you. The broken glasses and the Porsche and the good-looking sort-of-maybe-he-is-your-boyfriend-and-maybe-he-isn’t. He’s over-concerned about things he shouldn’t be, the vampire version of Al fucking Gore or some other profoundly dreary personage, you’re having some kind of violent breakdown and, Oh! My God in Heaven! The end! What _happened_ , and what am I going to _do_ about it? I’m sure that’s what you’re thinking. Well, I’m not going to tell you. And it’s cruel of me, I admit it.  
   
You understand this cruelty, though, don’t you? Perhaps it’s obvious that this is the only leverage I have left. These last little details, these hidden depths, the slavishly, fetishistically personal, I’ve got to keep them back from you, doling them out like little treats. I’ve got to be able to say to you, come over here darling, I’ll tell you a secret. Come close to me. I so miss our closeness. I’ll give you one moment at a time, as if we were addicted to each other. And if you’re good to me, darling, if you’re good, I might tell you everything.  
   
I’ll encourage you to anticipate that, to believe me. It’s not your fault this is happening, neither this supernatural oil-fire that is my “romantic” life, nor the lagging attention to the faded artistic accompaniments that continue to surround it. Like detritus. As if I periodically shook myself and novels fell off. I may eventually be inclined towards treating you charitably. Your tastes are what they are, and I have not accepted this with the grace befitting my age and station. I am big, baby, it’s the literature that got small - I know it, I hear it, I understand how it must seem to you. Norma Desmond has telephoned and she wishes to concede her title. And yet I don’t care.  
   
Even if I perhaps delude myself that this is in any way interesting to you. Really, Louis’ boring and inappropriate concern over Gulf of Mexico resource management on the part of the British Petroleum Limited Liability Company, that should have been enough to clue you in to what was going to happen. Just as his messy Chevette should have clued me in advance of this, and as everything I’ve ever said and done should have prepared you for what I did in response. I threw him out of my flat, and that was the end of it. And you knew I was going to, don’t deny it. I’m obligated to perform as you expect me to. Control and disaster, performance and constancy - it was always going to happen. Do try to keep up, darling.  
   
Yet you’re still reading, so maybe you do want to know about it. About those hours afterwards or the next time I saw him. I’ll tell you about that in good time. Maybe you even want to know about what I’m going to tell you here - my hand under his shirt, and I was absolutely in love with him, and everything was perfect and violently sensual. Maybe you want to know about that. Shall I tell you that I conquered him vibrantly and manfully, wrenching him from his world and into mine? That I’m the Goddamned Henry Miller of fucking vampires? I will. It’s easy to tell you that. It’s much easier to idealize that story the way I did my mortal life, or my fame than it is to attempt the “reality ”, a facile verisimilitude, a banal, grinding translation of the words we _actually_ said to each other and the harm we did. A great deal more preferable and so much less exhausting to idealize it, or out-and-out fictionalize than it is to admit the truth.  
   
The truth, incidentally, is this: I know about both of them, and as Woody Allen once remarked, “the difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.”

 

Though of course I didn’t know that then, and isn’t that lucky for you? Despite my instincts and attempts at literary greatness, here is a chapter for you about fucking, another vehicle through which I may artfully, cautiously, drip-feed you this story about sex and death and eventual decline, just long enough and just close enough to keep you interested.  
   
I shan’t make apologies for it. Nobody is making you believe me. Norma Desmond never telephoned. That’s a joke, obviously, that call never happened. Other telephone calls, however, did and I shall use that as a segue to begin discussing them.  
   
So let me bring you up to speed. The truth? Oh, yes. Details, baby, details. You’ll have your truth. And here it is:  
   
Let me paint you something the night before this Great Event I’ve alluded to, the night two nights prior to that session I told you about, or didn’t tell you about, a week after Date Night when I broke both my composure and my glasses. That night, the night before, I had had a telephone call from my mother, and Louis and I had had an argument. The call was brief, though long enough to convey that at some unspecified point over the coming months, if I still planned to be in Mobile I might see her. This was unprecedented (the call, not the argument). Gabrielle has never, not once since the technology has existed, called me on the telephone. At first I didn’t recognize her. I assumed it was someone on behalf of my Paris office, speaking arcane French in order to be – by some equally arcane interpretation of the term - polite. But then she said, “c’est Gabrielle,” and to my credit I did not drop the ‘phone.  
   
I did not tell Louis about the call. That was, as I’ve said, the night before The Great Event, and Louis had been at the flat, though he wasn’t there at that moment. He returned later, and you probably want to know about that too. For this, you need to know that the night immediately following events in _Fairhope_ , _Louis_ had telephoned me, and he never does that either.  
   
It was so unusual, in fact, that I assumed he must have done it from a callbox, because I can’t imagine his having a ‘phone of his own back then. His call was brief too – something of a theme – and about an hour after I’d given him directions, he arrived on the doorstep of the Mobile flat. He said nothing about my having the place, though the fact that I was here without telling him and actually beginning to establish myself in the town might well have been considered as part of the behavior set that the therapist had candidly referred to as “stalkerish” had I been foolish enough to announce it in session (so I’m a dysfunctional hypocrite. And what of it?) Louis, however, simply treated it as if I’d always had it, and had politely asked me if I wanted to go with him to see some university talk about Agatha Christie.  
   
Understand the poignancy of that offer, won’t you? He’d never have gone to something like that on his own, and neither would I, probably (indeed, this mild conflation indicated that for all Louis’ reading, he is not what one would call an authority on detective fiction) but his heart, if not his understanding, was clearly in the right genre and that was quietly touching. He wanted to do something for me. And I was so in love with him, in such a breathlessly stupid way that any invitation was a total excuse. Anyway, I went.  
   
At the end of the evening, he had graciously said goodnight and departed. When I returned to the flat, I felt strange about it. Fairhope had scared us, I think. It had been a little too earnest, and a little too much had been said, and now there needed to be silence. I resolved to play my cards close, which of course isn’t unusual, but perhaps I played them a little more closely than I’d previously done. I told him about the band I was playing with here, about the work I’d put into the flat, but I gave no reason for it despite its probable obviousness, and I didn’t ask him in.  
   
I didn’t have to. The next night, he appeared again. On this occasion, we’d gone out and walked the dog, and on the way back his hand had slipped into mine, and he’d come in with me. We’d kissed each other then, this time for some hours. I felt strange about that too. There was something about it that ruptured things, destabilized them, because it said so much and yet there wasn’t any explicit speaking. “I do love you,” he’d said, but not very much more than that. And outside of appreciating the films we’d been watching (well, “watching”), laughing at his interpretations and mocking his taste, I’d been almost totally silent. No declarations, no demands. I didn’t have to make them. Everything was obvious. And yet, I wished one of us would. But then he had left. The night after that, he had shown up at the flat, bringing a coat, a notebook and some books and had stayed. It had not been discussed. I don’t know if he intended it. He never said. It had simply happened.

 

And then, two nights after that, Gabrielle had telephoned, I had not told Louis about it, and eventually, we had gone to bed and I had woken up with my hand up his shirt. And eventually, fucking. But I struggle to explain both the context and the progression. My idiotic silence. His tendency to assume. That I thought if I said something, he’d disappear. It’s unbelievable. In retrospect, it’s still remarkable to me that we managed to have sex with each other at all.  
   
For example, I can’t tell if it’s important to the story that Gabrielle called, or that I didn’t tell Louis about it right away, it’s just that it did happen. It wasn’t for any reason either, that I didn’t tell him. It’s just because he was out with the dog when she called, and when he’d come home we were too busy having a stupid fight about Jean Baudrillard, whose work Louis was reading in order to revisit (apparently) one of his earlier arcs, reestablishing his quest to “really comprehend all of the European philosophy following the revolution,” as he put it (he meant the student revolution of the twentieth century, not the one I had lived through). That night, after summarizing the night’s coverage of the disaster for me, and then announcing his triumphant reclamation of his aggressively boring task, he and the dog had settled into the corner of my lounge-suite, and he had read me something aloud.  
   
At first I hadn’t been listening, preoccupied by the call and pretending to play Delford’s mandolin. I had things to think about, but they were giving way to thoughts about what I might do to him, Louis. I might slip the book out of his hands and crawl under his arm and just lie there grinning, holding it at arm’s length and watching him get furious. Or perhaps it would be quiet and soft, and something would happen, more of these strange directionless kisses, this clothed hand-holding and careful touches. I might finally take his hand and drag him to bed with me, rip off that sweater and those casual grey trousers. I imaged doing that, the sweetness and the callousness of it, though of course I resigned myself not to. Until he talks. Not until he talks. And then suddenly, I registered his speaking.  
   
It was not, however, to give permission. What I heard was a passage, a theory that weeping over the world, or making a great display of empathy was a cover for indecision and inaction. Caring masked not caring, Louis read, as if because pretending to care stood as the pretence of goodness, one was able to imagine oneself excused from real goodness, whatever that was. The irony of His Highness King of Unspecified Angst reading that passage to me as if an accusation was too delicious to ignore, and we’d had an argument about it. It had got nasty. It was the first fight we’d had since Fairhope and we kept it going for almost six hours. Until dawn. Long enough that the last part of the fight had been had in my bed. It went until he’d said “I don’t care anymore,” and gone to sleep, and I was left staring at him in impotent fury until I followed shortly thereafter.  
   
I think it was then that I started thinking about it, that everything started to become Woody Allen movies. This was when I had reason to collect the quote for our opening paragraphs. Perhaps I’m projecting onto the past now, creating some poetic structure for my own amusement, but in this picture I’m painting for you now, I’m lying on my side in pyjama bottoms, looking at Louis, wanting to wake him up and keep fighting, while concurrently recognizing that he was right, and thinking exactly this: “an idea for a short story about, um, ~~people in Manhattan~~ Vampires in Mobile who are constantly creating these real, unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.”  
   
Because look, if you didn’t notice, what I’m attempting to draw your attention to here is that in six hours of talking, six hours, we didn’t once talk about that part of it, our sleeping in the same bed. Not once. We didn’t talk about his showing up with the books as if he had planned for it. We didn’t talk about the fact that he was still here, and that this was the third night he’d been at the flat. Ostensibly I think we’d assumed or we’d play-acted that he’d take the guest room, but that hadn’t happened. We’d slept like lovers. And we didn’t talk about any of it. Not one word. So much might have been resolved by that conversation, but then, I suppose, we’d have to have started thinking about the universe.  Once again, or so it seemed, something had happened out of pure inertia, something unsolvable or something manufactured, but either way, something unspoken, while we argued about fucking Baudrillard as if we were really arguing about Baudrillard and not simply not talking about fucking. And then, the following evening, I had woken up with my hand underneath his shirt and had to cram the cat into the bag it had slipped out of.  
   
“Gabrielle’s coming,” I’d said, almost as soon as I saw him stir. “I forgot to tell you.”  
“When?” he asked. And as he did I realized I’d said as if it was his flat too, that we were sleeping in, as if I were required to consult him. There must be a shallow joke in that somewhere. What do a vampire and a mother in law have in common?  
“I don’t know,” I’d said, because I didn’t.  
“Very well,” he said. But there’d been a _tone_. And so I’d said,  
“What?”  
“Nothing.”   
“There’s something,” I’d said.  
“Lestat,” Louis said, frowning, closing his eyes again, “I’ve just woken up. There’s nothing.”  
“You wake up so damned slowly.”  
“I wake up as I wake up,” he’d said. “What do you want?”  
   
“Are you in a mood?” I had asked him, moving my hand under the shirt. “You’re not still mad at me.” Sometimes, years ago, in his sleep, Louis would hold my hand without even noticing. I used to make fun of him for that, for how much he needed me.  
 “No, I’m simply still half asleep,” he had answered. “Is it possible you’d give me a moment to collect myself?”  
“Wake up,” I said. “I want to talk to you.”  
He gave a resigned, exasperated sigh, but then he smiled. And I loved him. Eternally, and I always had and _et cetera_. Oh mon Dieu _._ These descriptions. Why don’t I just write his name in hearts all over my desk?  
   
His hand found its way to mine then and held it, stopping my movement. I knew then that it must have been a little annoying, brushing his chest in the way that I’d been. I almost apologized for it, but then Louis slid his arm around my waist and we kissed each other. Nothing spectacular. Just a kiss. I wasn’t going to say anything about it.  
“What are you going to do tonight?” I asked.  
“Nothing,” he said. “What are you doing?”  
“The set, for Saturday.”  
“What set?”  
“I told you.”  
“You may tell me again,” he said, tightening his hand temporarily. “But please, won’t you tell me in a quiet voice?”  
   
I rolled my eyes. “For Howard, for Saturday at Retroville. It’s Atomic, that’s the name of the party. After the Blondie song.”  
“Alright.”  
“Come if you want to,” I said, more casually than I felt.   
“Perhaps I will,” Louis said. “It’s unusual that you’ve managed to build a whole other life here, and I’m curious.” He ran his hand up and down my arm then, and I hadn’t been wearing anything on my arms and all the little hairs had stood up. He did not use the word “stalkerish,” though perhaps, reasonably, he might have done.  
   
“Or perhaps it is usual, for you, with your lack of capacity for boredom,” he said. “Still, I feel as if I should have known.”  
“Because of all the hipster bars you frequent?” I’d asked deadpan. “You have your ear to the scene, I know.”  
Louis had smiled at that too. “You don’t know that I don’t.”  
“Yes, I do,” I’d said. “Are you awake now?”  
“Unfortunately,” he said, but he was still smiling. “But tell me, will the band provide support for your four-track album?”  
   
“No, you do a four-track album by yourself,” I said. “That’s the point. _Nebraska_ was demos, originally. Those songs were all intended to be redone by the E Street Band. The point is that the musician retreats into their own genius and produces something personal. You’re not really interested.”  
“I’m interested. Serious Art.”  
“Fuck you, Louis. Everything I have ever done is Serious Art. You’re just jealous.”  
He’d laughed. Short, quiet, but he’d laughed. I loved it. I loved him. Stupid. Hearts on the desk.  
   
“They’re okay, the band,” I said. “Don’t let the stupid name fool you. Delford named it before I met them. He thinks it’s ironic.”  
“It’s somewhat ironic,” Louis said. He’d opened his eyes again now, bringing his other hand up to his face, pushing his hair out of it. “Thematically, I mean,” he said. “That is narrative irony, isn’t it? Or possibly it’s only sarcastic. I do struggle with the extent to which things are considered ironic now.”  
“Me too,” I said, honestly. “Lately I have this strategy of assuming that everything is.”  
“You’d be good at that, I would have thought.”  
“It’s kind of…” I’d started to say, but I didn’t really know what I had to say about it. I sat up, removing my hand at last, smoothing my hair. “When you say nothing, what do you actually mean?”  
   
“I mean nothing,” he said. “I’d like to finish that book, perhaps. Why, was there something else you wanted to do?”  
Yes. “Don’t you ever get bored?”  
“Not in the way you do. At least I don’t think so.” He leaned up on his elbows, blinking. He was adorably rumpled, and I wanted to see to it, but I settled for observation. I might have kissed him again, but the rules were unclear. Dammit, I really missed you, I wanted to say. I missed you so damn much. And now you’re here and I really wish you’d talk to me about it.  
“But are you…”  
“Am I what?”  
“Are you going to lie there all night? I have work to do.” 

   
I did actually have work to do, by the way. I wasn’t making that up. One can’t always rely on pure genius, especially if one works with others, and by this weekend, I wanted ‘Werewolves of London’ to sound as if I had written it myself.  
   
You’ll find this is more important when it comes to covering such easily identifiable songwriters as Warren Zevon, as the varied artistic success of the posthumous _Enjoy Every Sandwich_ tribute compilation should attest. Take _American Idol_ (you needn’t pretend you don’t watch it) and the praise the judges give a singer for “making the song their own.” You know what they mean by it, I’m sure, and you know how important that is in a craft based medium. In brief, musicians, the bulletin is this: it’s not enough to reproduce the song. Anybody can do that. The art is in the interpretation of the work, in giving it additional shades, in translating its glory to an unforeseen context.  
   
At least, this is what I tell myself. Of late I am forced to acknowledge that playing in a covers band means one is required to tell oneself a lot of things. For example, it occurs to me periodically to be grateful for the forced study of twentieth century music, at least. And to make genre-defining, barroom silencing claims about interpretation as a true and noble art (see: above). But imitation and mimicry are both sincere forms of flattery, even if they are valuable in no other way. And since we’re talking so intimately, you and I, and since it so pains me to lie to you, you may as well know that point number one on the list was the fact that I needed something to do while in town, and this was easy.  
   
Still, all kinds of things are art when they need to be. The work was actual work, and doing it was required. Whether I required it for the performance on Saturday, or for the performance tonight, I couldn’t tell you, but perhaps this can be your work, to interpret that. Everybody needs something to do. To draw on Woody Allen again, “eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.” Think of this work like that. A kind of intellectual dressing for inclement nothingness.  
   
Perhaps you’ll read that into Louis’ reading too, for it’s not exactly fair to tell you that he wouldn’t speak to me.  He did talk, in snatches, from the moment he came into the room. Just not about anything. Just the fact that the oilrig had sunk, and that eleven people had died on it. Or something like it. I wasn’t really listening and I didn’t respond. You may call me callous if you wish to, but Louis has killed a good deal more than eleven people in his time, so I think you’ll see what I meant about his selective application of Baudrillard.  
   
I mean, I mimed listening when he spoke, because he was still attractive, but honestly it was more surprising to me that I had a paper delivered. He had scanned the _Press-Register_ since his first night here, which told me that the housekeeper must have cleaned them up to someplace only Louis could find them. It also told me that at some point I must have ticked a box and sent a check to somebody in order to secure their delivery, though I did not remember doing it, and that preoccupied me far more than any piece of trivia he dug out of those papers could have done. He’d persist, however, and once more I wondered how on earth he could possibly not be bored.  
“I might go out for some other papers, later,” he said, as if I cared or it mattered. “It’s preposterous, really, but for some reason I do crave a _Times-Picayune_.”  
   
I didn’t respond to that either, though it might have been an appeal to my nostalgia. “Take the dog.”  
“If you’d like.”  
“Don’t feed in front of him. It confuses him.”  
“I won’t. Why don’t you come?”  
“No,” I said. “Can you see me working? This is work I’m doing here, I’m not coming with you to get papers.”  
Louis looked up at me. He’d picked up that damned Baudrillard again and I wondered – I was doomed to wonder until death – if he meant to do this, or if it was just habit, or preference. I almost said something about it, then didn’t. His expression was flat and untroubled.  
   
“Would you like me to bring something back for you?” he asked.  
“No, I’ll go out later.”  
“Alright,” he said, and then he wasn’t looking at me anymore. “Take time to think about it if you’d like. I have a chapter or so left”  
   
This aside was revealing. He was still reading slowly rather than supernaturally fast, as I assumed he could now. He wouldn’t, I later found out. In fact, he says, and I am more or less quoting, that vampires should not delude themselves that what he refers to as “speed-reading” is really the same as real reading (“the issue is comprehension,” he’d said, when I’d pressed him on it. “And I do mean real comprehension, not a mere performance of intellect. I mean comprehension enough for genuine engagement.”) But I didn’t know that about him then, so I was curious, and I watched him doing it for a while, over top of my playing. He did seem visibly engaged in an act of will. It was probably difficult, forcing himself to individually consume each word and I loved him for that a little. So damned particular. The slight pursing of lips, as if something bothered him. The stern curve of his cheekbone.  
   
“Bring me some porn,” I said, without totally intending to, and Louis’ eyebrows shot up a full inch. His eyes did not, however, leave the page, and under the circumstances that pissed me off more than it should have.  
“Something disgusting,” I said. “I’ll need it, later, when I’m sucking my own wrist in the bathroom.”  
   
He did look up then. His eyes were wide, though more startled than disapproving. I don’t think he knew what to say. It had come out of my mouth as if my thoughts were no longer connected to it. I probably would have blushed had I been the sort of person who did that, but as it was, I simply continued playing. I hadn’t closed the lid of the piano to speak to him, I’d left it open. That way, he could tell I didn’t really care about him and what he did, especially not if it was ignoring me.  
   
“Oh I know,” I would have said, casually, to simultaneously smooth over things and to underscore that it was his problem. “We’ve talked so much about sex it might now be impossible to have it. Didn’t someone say something about talking and fucking? Woody Allen?”  
   
Louis’ face was still frozen in surprise. But he spoke. “I don’t know,” he said. “I liked _Bananas_ , and I didn’t loathe _Manhattan_ , but I haven’t seen anything else.”  
“ _Annie Hall_ is good, “ I said. “I mean, not good, but I think you’d like it. It’s about people trying to live together. Incompatible people. They break up.”  
He gave me a strange look. He’d put his book over his knee.  
   
“So, what?” I said, aggressively, banging the keys. “I missed the seventies, I had to experience them vicariously through cinema. There was even a line that made me think of you. About life being divided into situations that were horrible and situations that were miserable. The impression was that one was lucky to be miserable because it meant things aren’t horrible. Grim, I thought. I thought you would like it.”  
“It’s a comedy,” he said. “But we could watch it if you like, they have it at Netflix.”  
“Have you memorized the catalog?”  
“More or less,” Louis said, with a faint shrug, the kind that indicated that my attempt at teasing him out of it had fallen completely flat.  
   
Well, not entirely flat. His shoulders were pulled forward now, just slightly, just slightly defensive. Really, he was going to be upset about _Netflix_? That seemed precious, even for Louis, so I waited, but he offered nothing else.  
   
“Woody Allen reminds me of you,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “With your therapy and your staring into the abyss all night long. There are even certain parallels with his real life sexual hist…”  
   
Louis cut me off with a look. He needn’t have, since I already knew I’d gone too far. I wouldn’t have blushed then, even if I could have. The feeling of shame was too deep for that. Why do you say such things, she’d have said. Thankfully, of course, I had left the lid of the piano open. Plonkity plonk.  
“Didn’t you live in New York?” I asked, the very soul of casual enquiry.  
   
It didn’t work. Louis kept his gaze hard for a few seconds, before turning away from me, lifting the book and going back to it as if I wasn’t even there. I’d been dismissed, and I felt it. Fucking bastard. So what if I’d deserved it. And he’d lived in New York with Armand, so it was gracious of me to pretend to be interested, instead of just jealous, which is what I actually was.  
   
Yet I couldn’t help myself stealing one or two glances before I stopped waiting for him to rejoin the conversation and put my earphones back in. I did this to better select the points where I preferred my cadences to differ meaningfully from the original, but as I played I thought vaguely of another song, struggling to remember what it was. Then I realized I was writing it. I made a couple of notes. Looked up again. Bastard. Back at the notes. Back to the song. Ten minutes. More. I wasn’t looking at him when he spoke.  
“I should tell you,” he said, eventually.  
   
At least I thought that was what he said. I took out my earphones, irritated. So what if he’d forgiven me. I was busy now.  
“What?”  
“That I want to, I think, “do it” with you, as they say,” said Louis. He stopped at the colloquialism, distracted by it. I wanted to throttle him. But I waited.  
   
“I understand if you don’t want to,” he continued, clearing his throat, his little speech making him visibly awkward. “Under the circumstances and what I have… I appreciate the situation. I won’t be hurt. But I do. Want to. With you. I wanted you to know. But I don’t mind. If you don’t want to.”  
“What, don’t mind having sex?” I said.  “That rather takes the fun out of it.”  
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “If you want to wait, we’ll wait. I wish you’d keep playing.”  
   
I hadn’t realized I had stopped. In fact, I was surprised to realize that I was unbearably tense. I could hardly put my earphones back in under the circumstances, so instead I plucked absently at the keys, not really playing anything, a little concerto here, a little Moonlight Sonata there. Haydn came in and it went on for a while, seemingly for an eternity, but the music changed nothing. Then Louis said,  
“I won’t make you apologize, if that’s why you hesitate.”  
   
I looked up.  
“What?”  
“I understand, I think. I don’t believe you meant that. Because the therapist’s impression was that these kinds of conversations could be…”  
But this was unbelievable. “It’s not a situation that calls for analysis, Louis, I’m just busy, if you hadn’t noticed. I have work to do. Won’t you leave me alone?”  
   
“Didn’t you hear what I said before?” he asked, in what sounded like disbelief.  
“I heard you,” I said. What the hell was happening? It was as if another person, not me, was speaking, was sitting at the piano and answering him. Or rather, not answering him.  
“I notice you haven’t answered me,” he said.  
“I’m not going to answer you,” I said. “That’s not how people have sex, by talking about their therapy. I can’t think of anything less sexually appealing than that.”  
   
“It embarrasses you,” Louis said. “Talking in this manner. You said so, in session. It made sense to me. It made sense out of you. That speech from Hamlet, “'tis unmanly grief,” you know, it made me think of it, “it shows a will most incorrect to heaven,” that someone, or some circumstance, had been like King Claudius to you, had said…”  
“Yes, I know your theory, thank you very much. Did I tell you mine about Woody Allen?”  
   
Too far. Again, too far, and I braced for certain impact in Louis’ immaculate posture. I really was scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel of unkindness, and we both knew it. I could feel him watching me, struck by the cruelty of my own words  - not once, but twice - and by an idiotic paranoia that he could read what I was thinking when I didn’t even know. But he said nothing. If he was hurt, he didn’t show it, if he was angry, he remained as still as a glacial lake.  
   
“All I did was ask you about living in New York,” I said, but that didn’t do anything either. No expression. Nothing. Louis’ stillness is sometimes as ominous as his movement.  
“That’s not what you were going to say,” he said, finally. It ended there. He opened the book again.  
   
It was cutting. Oh, I know, I can't blame him. I’d managed to devastate the moment, even at the point of proposition from Louis, Louis who belonged to me but had refused every chance I had ever offered him. But his vaguely expectant air irritated me, and I wasn’t going to apologize, since I hadn’t actually said anything. I’d stopped myself, for which I felt I should be justly appreciated. Perhaps I should vocally refuse him now just to make the point, I thought. I almost did, but a faint awareness of how petty it seemed interrupted me. Somehow, the rules of conversation had changed in the last six months, and I hadn’t been party to their ratification. This, too, was irritating beyond measure.  
“Louis,” I said, abruptly pausing the song that wasn’t a song. “Louis, this situation with the therapist...”  
   
He must have heard my tone, but he seemed to ignore it, for he put his book down and stood up. Mojo was momentarily upset by this, until he discovered that Louis’ seat was vacant and clambered into it. Louis, meanwhile, walked over to the piano without fear or restraint. He sat down next to me. As if I’d asked him to. Because that was how he did everything now. Without permission. I wanted to rip him apart and drink every drop out of him. But that was more or less what he was offering me, and I froze.  
   
Could he tell I’d done that? He sat lightly, cautiously now, as if he knew he sat in borrowed space, and this minor deference made me forgive him a little. “It’s performative,” I said, or heard myself saying. This would fix it, I'd just tell him, and that would fix it. “You’re the one who told me so. Everything about me is a performance. You can’t expect what I say to be genuine. You can’t use therapy to analyze it, that would be like analyzing…”  
   
But I got stuck there. I couldn’t think of a metaphor. Louis didn’t offer one either. His face was sad, and his tone was almost apologetic, but the fact that this made me hurt for him only irritated me further. He sighed. Again. “You remember every terrible thing I say to you.”  
Like a butterfly pinned to a board.  You can’t put me in terms like that, I’ll break apart. I’ll die. “It’s hard to resist when there are so many to choose from.”     
   
His expression changed instantly. That’s right, I thought. I’m not the only performer in the room, chéri. I know who you really are. Louis went from benevolent concern to pained recognition, and I took my victory. But I couldn’t take the pleasure in it I wanted to. The hurt look in his eyes was authentic, and I hadn’t really won anything in that, except guilt. In my peripheral vision, I saw Louis staring at his hands. What? I thought. What other facile, conciliatory nonsense are you going to throw at me? But for a moment or two he was silent. Then he lanced my heart, and my anger deflated.  
“I apologize if I’m being… too aggressive on the matter," he said. "I’m… I believe I’ve told you that I find this very awkward. Perhaps we should discuss it later.”  
  
Oh, the artfulness of that proper confession! My immediate reaction was powerful enough as to be almost overwhelming. He’ll never admit that he knows how to do this, to use all of his graciousness, to speak straight from the pages of some faded romance novel. He couldn’t have played it better. My darling, I wanted to say, while I covered him in gentle kisses and begged for forgiveness I didn’t deserve. My dear Victorian gentleman, I’d have said. I didn’t, though. I didn’t do any of it. I was too smart for that now. I began to play the opening refrain from ‘Love Me or Leave Me,’ though I elected not to sing it, but rather to wander straight into the solo.  
“You don’t remember the good things,” Louis said, after seeming to listen for some time.  
“What good things?” I said, in what I hoped was a tone of finality.  
  
It was, evidently, as at this, Louis got up, I suppose having given up. He laid his hand briefly on my shoulder as he did so. Such beautiful hands, such lovely intimacy. But I ignored it. I put my earphones back in when he left me.  
   
It was hard to concentrate though. What with this tightness in my throat, because feeling was caught there, this ache in my chest, and this faint tremble in my fingers because I hadn’t touched him. I’d swear I even felt something between my thighs, though of course my body didn’t respond as a mortal body might have. It was muscle memory, perhaps, or the ghost of it, that I felt anything there at all.  Love me or leave me, let me be lonely, you won’t believe me, but I love you only. Huh, you ought to meet his tailor. Usually it gave me such pleasure to sing. I saw my own notes too, but had all but forgotten the song.  
   
What would I write now, anyway? (I really did ask myself that then, all those months ago. And you are feeling the effects of that reflection now. Aren't you grateful?) The song was a crisis, just as the four-track album was a crisis and the abortive writing that I’d done while in town, dressing for nothingness, floating in the abyss. It was a joke, a disaster, and oh, how I felt it when he left me. How I felt it in every inch of me; fuck all of my novels, they’re terrible and I should never listen to Louis, everything he says confuses me. I took the earphones out again so I could hear him talking to the dog, requesting politely that Mojo accede his seat. It didn’t work, and Louis accepted it, choosing another position. How I loved him for that, the fact that he knew Mojo was a person. And don't you see now, what I meant about it? I’ve met the Devil – the honest to God fucking _Devil -_ but I’ve written about this as if it were interesting, as if you cared. A half written song, my lover and my dog. Stop the presses! This is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark! Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.  
  
So Louis was right, maybe. Don’t be so bombastic. Think of the novelists you love.  A real book this time, rather than a self-gratifying melodrama.  And real songs, rather than teenaged gothic poetry. That’s what I thought I was doing then, being mature, being a serious artist, stretching it across my other thoughts, all strikingly less noble. He’s so thin, I thought, really, he’d been too thin when he died, and this made me feel as it always had, that somebody should protect him from everything horrible. His throat, his neck, he’s so delicate, he doesn’t know how much danger there is in something powerful. And I’d woken up with my hand underneath his shirt! And it’s happened! He’s on a plate, just sitting there like Creole china, so why aren’t I over there right now ripping his clothes off him and bathing myself in his sainted blood? I think there's too much burden placed on the orgasm, you know, to make up for empty areas in life. Oh merciful fucking death, was it possible to have therapy at all without literally becoming Woody Allen?  
   
He looked up at that moment as if he’d heard me. Maybe he had. Had he seen me take the earphones out, was he watching?  
Every detail of his face was painful to look at. He was like an ink drawing, a Japanese masterpiece, with that sharp line of contrast between his black hair and his white skin.

“It doesn’t mean you are unable to be genuine,” he said. “It never has. There is genuineness in the performance, I think. That’s who you are, a sum, or perhaps origin, of varied performance.”  
I dragged my eyes back to the keys but they were no help at all. Louis’ damned Baudrillard and his damned stillness, his blasted composure made me want to leap over the piano and yell in his face.  
“How profound you are,” I said. “It’s all that philosophy. Tell me more. Tell me again who I really am.”  
   
He took my sarcasm like a blow. I saw it in his face and in his body, and I fully expected him to stand up and walk out. For a second I wanted him to. For a second I almost said something to make him do it. But I didn’t, and neither did he. Instead he said,  
“This is such bullshit.”   
“The book?” I asked. “I’m not surprised.”  
“No,” said Louis. “Not the book.”  
I waited.  
“We are living together,” he said, finally. “It has happened. You do know that. I don’t know why you act this way.”  
   
I was too shocked to speak. I think I might have said, “what the fuck?” but I may have only said that in my head. I don’t know. It’s a little hazy. All I remember is the utter, space-fracturing shock. I’m certain I stopped playing. Well, relatively certain. It doesn't matter. Pick whatever works. It's your cover.  
   
“You won’t even…” he continued, as if he had some right to being exasperated. I continued not speaking. I had no idea where to start. There was simply too much to say. _Annie Hall_ was at least funny. It’s a comedy. They have it at Netflix. Impossible.  
   
“I could leave,” he said.  
“Why don’t you?” I told him. “I didn’t invite you. All you do is sit around reading, anyway. You can do that at your own place.”  
“Do you want me to go?”  
No, of course I don’t, I wanted to scream. But what I said was, “it makes no difference to me, chaton.”  
   
He sighed, judgmentally this time. There was no disguising that. His benevolent patience had worn out and he was Louis again. “I’ll leave then,” he said. “How long will it be – two days, three? Before you start sending me emails, wandering outside my building. I should have trusted my instincts.”  
“You should always trust your instincts, beautiful one,” I said. And I was right. Who in the hell did he think he was dealing with?  
   
Louis placed his book on a side-table and folded his hands. His movements, as ever, were slight and gracious, but I knew he was pissed as hell. Does he count in his head, I wondered. Un to dix, to calm negotiation with The Brat Prince, who, as ever, needed eternal managing. The knowledge that he was probably doing exactly this made me want to be particularly cantankerous. Under normal circumstances it would have been irresistible. Plonkety plonk. Fucking Werewolves of fucking London.  
   
It wasn’t until he got up again that I realized I’d been completely lost in those thoughts. It gave me a sudden shock, accompanied by a rising nausea, because something had happened, and there’d been movement in the room without my noticing it. I was frightened of that, that my thoughts could override the physical space, that I could be so unconscious, even for such a short moment. His face reassured me, slightly, so I could fix on that, at least. Only for a moment though, because nothing had changed. I looked away. Back at the keys. No. Fuck. He’d walked over again, and was standing next to me.  
   
Louis didn’t sit down this time, though he did stand tantalizingly close. After a moment he laid his hand on my shoulder again, not squeezing or stroking or anything, just resting it there as if eternal, the way he always did. And I liked it. And I’ve always liked it. Why can’t I ever just say it?  
“Why can’t you ever just say it?” he asked me.  
“I haven’t had enough therapy,” I snapped, mostly out of shock.  
The hand disappeared. “You really don’t like it.”  
“I really don’t need it.”  
“Perhaps not,” he said. “Though I do, I think. And I think there are times that you think…”  
   
“Stop trying to read my mind, Louis,” I told him. “If it’s your business to know what I’m thinking, I’ll tell you. If it’s your business.”  
He thinned his lips, as if trying to actually think about what I was thinking and finding it distasteful, though more probably he was simply sifting through strategies. Managing me. I’ll kill you, I thought. But I was in love with him even for that, even as it drove me to the point of violence. I’m going to stop writing that though, because you must know it by now. I loved every single Goddamned stupid fucking thing he did and it’s appalling. Even his distaste was like finally being home. I was _grateful_ for it. I think I hate myself a little for that now. I should have known better. Still, it’s not important to this story how I feel about it now. My writing is never important.  
   
“But you write about it,” he said. “You write about so many things you never say. I used to think you were lying, that you simply made things up to make yourself appear better than you were. Sometimes it seemed to me that you must be doing that, because what other reason could you have had to write them? But I don’t think you do any more. I think it’s that you struggle to artic…”  
“And don’t use that therapy talk on me. I get enough of that at session, and it’s infuriating then, too.”  
   
Silence. He was as angry as I was, I knew that. I could feel it. And yet he didn’t leave. I willed him not to, and God I willed him not to say anything else difficult. I wanted everything to go back how it was, with him quietly reading, and me noisily working. I’d imagined the tenseness. It hadn’t been real. It had been fine. Not talking about any of it is safer. Less likely to fail.  
   
Oh mon Dieu, but that’s repression, isn’t it, I realized with sudden, equally nauseating force. Repressed, apparently. I have it on medical authority, and here is the proof. That’s a polite word for what I am. I wish I’d never learned it. I saw Lon Cheney walking with the queen, I thought, disorientingly. Zevon’s words about the man with a thousand faces, and for each of those, I am both mundanely and directly responsible. I wanted to sigh and never stop.  
   
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” Louis said, not really sounding as if he was, and making as if to walk away. “It’s too soon, I should have known.”

 

I didn’t say anything, but I took his hand and pulled him onto the piano stool with me. His eyes traveled over my face as he sat, as if I confused him, as if he couldn’t decide whether or not to stay furious with me. I imagine I did, and I imagine he couldn’t.  
   
But his hair was so disheveled that I found myself tucking a strand or two behind his ear, and he let me. He watched me closely, but he let me. Let’s just be quiet, I told him, though not in words, cupping his face, moving my thumb over his cheek. There’s really no need for all this speech.  
   
Louis apparently disagreed. “But why do you come, if you hate it so much?” he said.  
Why do you think, my little idiot? I thought. Yet I hadn’t said anything aloud, and it seemed he still expected an answer.  
“Ssh, darling,” I said. He frowned.  
“I want to know.”  
“Yes, you want to know everything,” I said. “You always do. It’s very sweet, really, this quest for irrelevant knowledge.”  
   
Louis snorted. But he didn’t get up. I accepted the opening. I put my arm around him, and continued stroking his hair. Soft and black and thick, like an animal.  
“I really wish you’d…”  
“Louis,” I said, “please just be quiet.”  
He gave me a hard look. Then he turned away. “As you wish.”  
   
Though I thought I was supposed to, I didn’t relent. I kept petting him. Smooth strokes, very gentle, as one would handle a startled and pampered cat. He stayed rigid, but he closed his eyes. Eventually, his face reformed itself very slightly, enough to suggest that he might eventually be inclined to give in. It looked as if it would done grudgingly, but I took what I could get under the circumstances.  
   
I guided him to leaning his head back against my shoulder, and he did. He did so lightly, more lightly even, than the touch of his hand had been, but he did it and I took it and I closed my eyes too. Strange how he could be so warm to me, even as I knew physically that he was cold. I could feel the absence of heat under his clothing, but it seemed to radiate. From his body. And especially his scent. I’ve never known if I affect him as strongly as he does me, but if we were remotely even in this he couldn’t possibly stay mad at me now. Not here.  
   
Wherever that was, I think I was lost in it when something punctured the stillness. Louis had begun absently picking out a one-handed tune on the piano. It was abrupt enough that it took me some moments to realize what it was. Or at least what it seemed to be - a very terrible approximation of the top half of ‘Für Elise.’ Under other circumstances, I might have stopped him from doing something so unsophisticated with an instrument of mine, but now I understood that it was in my interests to let him do what he wanted. He seemed to be deep in private thought, as his expression didn’t change when I played the low part for him.  
   
He couldn’t handle the verses at all, but I was struck by the fact that this didn’t matter to me either. I imagined he wanted to speak. I imagined he knew I wouldn’t. Perhaps he was working his anger out on my piano, I don’t know. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was sitting next to me, and that everything was as I wished it to be, more or less calm. In a strange way I preferred it to silence. That is, until he gave up part way through the last verse, and sighed heavily.  
   
I felt for him, a little. His graciousness was strained, I knew, but he’d done it. And he’d done it for me. So I turned to him as if I were really listening.  
“I should learn,” he said. “I should learn to do this. I know I could mimic it if I really chose, and I can’t think why I don’t. Perhaps I’m afraid.”  
“Whatever for?” I said, “anything you want, I’ll play it for you.”  
   
Louis seemed contemplative then, almost as he’d been with the Baudrillard, almost as if he couldn’t decide what to say. But he spoke anyway. He looked up. “Art of the Fugue, then” he said. “If you please.”  
   
I pleased. Or rather, I was pleased that he’d responded in tone. “What, all of them?”  
“Yes, all of them.”  
“That’s a peculiar request,” I said. Louis arched an eyebrow, though he wasn’t looking at me anymore.  
“I don’t recall your asking me to qualify.”  
“It’s your influence,” I said. “I want to know everything.”  
   
Louis rolled his eyes. But he smiled. Only slightly, but it was enough that I noticed its resigned acceptance and I began to oblige. I needed both hands for it though, so I began to disengage myself. It didn’t disturb him. His face had settled again now.  
   
That short smile, however, had revealed that it was changeable, his face, and given such potential, he was intoxicatingly soft to look at. I felt a tingle in my fingers even as they took up occupation. Real forgiveness was coming. Perhaps. Though I knew better than to assume I would get off so easily. He’d make me work for it, this I understood. I understood this in his selection too, now. Long, and theoretical. Something that insisted on being listened to.  
   
He bowed his head ever so graciously as I played too. I watched his face. I didn’t need to look at the keys for this, baroque noise music, pure formalist pleasure. I had known it from first hearing, it had excited me that much. I knew why it appealed to me. But perhaps it appealed to him on some other level I couldn’t understand. Pythagorean geometry. I’d heard that once. Something to think about.  
   
I wondered at that. If I occupied his mind, along with all those other things. If he wondered about me the way I did about him sometimes. Strange, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, though possibly not with the strength and vehemence that I did so now, that you can know a person so well as to find fault with every step and breath they make, but still not really claim to know them at all. He did seem to be thinking. He always seemed to be thinking. We were so close, and yet we couldn’t ever read each other with any reliability.  
   
As I was wondering about this, Louis moved slightly.  He moved his head forward and sat up properly, leaning slightly towards the piano. Then, without looking at me, he moved his hand out of his lap, over my back, and to my far shoulder. His fingers only barely made contact. It wasn’t enough to stop me or to change anything, and I was conscious of the fact that only minutes ago I might have resisted it. I didn’t now though. The closeness was too pleasant and my position too tenuous. And the color of the sweater offset his eyes, I noticed. It was a pale brown. Fitted too. Just. Not in a showy way, but on him it was an attractive sweater.  
   
“It’s strange,” he said. “You’ve memorized something so complex, and yet basic addition confuses you.”  
I wasn’t allowed to be insulted by that, though I felt it fleetingly. “They’re completely different. And I could if I wanted. I just don’t need to know about it.”  
“No,” he said. The smile again. Brief. Perfect. So little movement, but such change to his face. “No, I suppose you don’t.”  
   
He moved once more. The hand brushed over my shoulder a little, very soft, and then he brought it back to his lap. Still not looking at me, but I thought he could see me anyway. I don’t know how I knew that. Perhaps I was as prescient of him as he was of me. He seemed aware, and so I assumed he was, and the assumption seemed real. When he spoke, he did so dryly and with effervescence, like a crisp champagne. “Perhaps it’s necessary that your talents be kept pure of such mundane concerns.”  
   
“That’s what I maintain,” I said. “Artists shouldn’t be bothered with that crap.”  
“Take leaving tips.”  
“I tip, Louis.”  
“Yes, but you can’t _calculate_ a tip.”  
“And why should I? That would only be a problem if I under-tipped and I don’t do that.”  
“So you assume,” he said. “And I’m sure you’re right, but wouldn’t you like to know?”  
“Not if it’s boring.”  
   
The smile again, like a flash. His eyes were brilliant. “An eternity to squander, and you can’t even bring yourself to be bored for the minute it takes to calculate a fifteen percent gratuity.”  
“Fifteen percent is cheap, Louis. It’s beneath you to be that cheap.”  
“One of us ought to be,” he said, his hands folded back in his lap as if they’d never moved. “Given your, ah… ‘business acumen’ in that regard. Still, to your credit you have made able decisions as to the people you keep around you.”  
   
I got the message. Oh, how I got it. Sharp and sweet, filling my body with from toe to top. He spoke as he’d done in the earliest days of this century, and in the deepest folds of the nineteenth. I could never entirely tell if it was artless or artful. The dryness I recognized, but he’ll never admit that he knows how to do this part of it. To touch me as if he didn’t mean to, to hold his body like a luscious, secretive creature that I would have to have and devour.  
   
He’ll never admit it, but he’s always done it. He makes his body impervious, sculptural. He holds it to be observed. Perhaps it was accidental, some habit or reaction, some layered physical quirk, but he’d never said, and so I would always wonder. He was doing so now, and I wondered now, but what I didn’t wonder about was why. Of course he was doing it. He couldn’t possibly resist my skilled interpretation of the Art of the Fugue, nobody could. I smirked, and continued playing, and he bowed his head once more.  
“You’re not dating me for my business acumen,” I said.  
His eyebrows went up again. He didn’t quite smile. “No.”  
   
It was thrilling. What _are_ you doing here? I could have asked him. In the grander scheme, outside of your entrancing malleability when it comes to pleasurable art? Is this safety for you, or comfort? Have you really forgiven me, or are you just dressing for nothingness? Forgiveness was the pressing question, in a way that seemed more imposing than this small argument had made it seem.  
   
I didn’t ask him, though. He wouldn’t answer. You know, he’d say, as if I did. He might, if pressed, give details, but inevitably they would be complicated details, and complication was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear about now. He’d given me my task to perform, and so I performed it. If his proximity brought with it a particular poignancy, it was purely because it carried traces of the past as it came. History had wandered in like an apologetic guest, into my sitting room that I had attempted to build entirely anew, that I had wanted to build against all memories despite having built it exclusively out of my tastes and recollections. So I couldn’t help but notice its coming. Or that in this age, nothing can really be built without history. But we know that, don’t we? There’s nothing remarkable for you in these contemplations.  
   
Nothing except Louis. Oh, but I’m multi-tasking, darling. You think I’m playing but I’m not. I’m only miming while I notice you. I shan’t bother to tell you that I loved him. It’s not important, and it isn’t new. Rather, I will tell you that I felt every inch of contact that his body made with mine. Every breath, every movement. I took my forgiveness in this, but he should have taken a lesson too. Don’t do it by speaking. You know where your talents are. Good Lord, but you know.  
   
And then, halfway through Contrapunctus four, I kissed him. Quickly, keeping my fingers on the keys. His eyes closed, and I kissed him again. This time, however, I darted my tongue between his lips. I felt him jump a little, just slightly. I could smell the change in him as it happened, a bloom of rising blood, the smell of arousal, deepening as he responded. It threatened to overwhelm me, and he was so easily damaged.  
   
“Ah, don’t think of it like that,” said Louis. I’d stopped kissing him. Why had I stopped?  
“You really can’t read my mind,” I told him. “So please stop pretending to. It’s become irritating.”  
“I don’t have to read anything,” he said, and he smiled again, his hand at my cheek, the other resting lightly, maddeningly, at my waist. “You don’t know how predictable you are.”  
   
“You really think I’m predictable?” this was preposterous. What was this, a dare, a challenge? What would he have me do?  
“There’s nothing new in this,” he said. “You really do imagine the entire world as an arrangement you can control. This includes me, of course. I ought to find that insulting.”  
“Don’t you?” I asked, genuinely curious.  
   
“Yes,” he said, but it didn’t seem as if he really did. Rather it seemed as if he did this deliberately, as if he were trying to infuriate me. It was working. I saw myself grasping his prim little body and tearing a hole in his throat.  
“It hurts my feelings that you think I’m predictable,” I said.  
“No it doesn’t,” said Louis. “You simply think I’m wrong. You think you are the only consciousness that matters. It’s all egotism.”  
   
“I think I prefer it when you compare me to animals,” I said, only half joking. Did he really comprehend how wild he was making me, how dangerous that could be? Louis didn’t respond, but instead turned back to the piano, waiting for me to keep playing. I hadn’t realized I had stopped. Again.  
“Well,” I said.  
“Well,” he said, in return. “I was going to leave, but then I didn’t like to give the impression that I was issuing you with an ultimatum.”  
His attempt to reconcile his prudishness with his gentlemanly desire for proper sexual conduct struck me as rather hilarious. I laughed.  
   
“Don’t laugh at me, please,” he said. It brought me up short. It was serious now, apparently. But it had been serious before, only I hadn’t wanted to admit it.  
“I won’t, Louis.”  
“There’s an appeal to clarity of communication,” he said. “I understand your resistance, and I apologize, but I…”  
I waited for a little while, because it seemed he was still speaking. But eventually I registered the length of the pause, and I asked him. “What?”  
   
He hit middle C with his thumb, refusing my gaze. “But I want you to… I don’t want you to… I want you to have a…”  
I waited again.  
“I want you to have a nice time,” he finished, ineffectually.    
   
But this did make me laugh. And laugh. And laugh. His face fell, though he composed it quickly.  
“I’m sorry,” I said, clamping my fingers over my mouth. “I promised. I know. I’m sorry.”  
He looked away, annoyed. “Louis,” I said. “Come on. Of course I’ll… I’m already having a nice time.”  
“Stop laughing, then,” he said. “It shouldn’t make you laugh.”  
   
I was taken aback by the tenderness his sudden petulance had induced in me. It was almost as overwhelming as his momentary arousal had been. What a stubborn, insolent creature he could be sometimes, his propriety so easily offended.  
“I’m sorry, chéri,” I said, again, trying to pet him gently as I’d done before. He’d tensed a little, but it gave way. “It’s a little funny, though. Isn’t it? Our awkwardness, when we’ve had more than two hundred years to figure it out.”  
   
It seemed another two hundred years before he answered.  
“It ought to be,” he finally said. “But I want… for some reason my greatest instinct, greater even than… is to resist, and that is...” He stopped, biting his lip.  “That is… something else.”  
   
I wanted to laugh again, I felt that. But such strange laughter, imprecisely suspended across something unbearable. Whether there was design in this too, I have no idea. All I know is that I was utterly enthralled. Such a delicate creature, such a cultured pearl, and I believed this totally even as I knew what a lie it was. If Louis left tonight, he would murder someone, or he would come very close to it. He would do so without real remorse or real trouble. I knew. For all his contemplations, for all his guilts, he is exactly as he is made to be, and I know this because I made him.  
   
But how to explain this? That I knew the lie and yet discarded it? That I knew his strength and yet to me he seemed as fragile, as loosely assembled as if he were made out of porcelain dust? I couldn’t believe in the truth, I never could, not when the theater was so exquisite. I stroked his hand. A mundane participation in something like this, but it felt meaningful to me. Louis’ thoughts were in some distant universe, and I was holding us both to this one by doing it. He linked his fingers with mine, like a net.  
“And yet I do love you.”  
   
He said it plainly. As if it were unarguable fact, like gravity, and my God he actually means it, I marveled. How he means what he says in this, always. Love seemed so paltry to me when subjected to the drear light of psychoanalysis, of relationship counselling, of “living together,” and all of that grey, modern nonsense. I had loved him as if he were an extension of my very soul and the words seemed so inadequate before that. But this was different. Louis’ words were exactly that blunt, but the sheer uncomfortable honesty, the obvious truth of them made them miraculous, and the line between performance and reality, and present and recollection, was strained to the point of illegibility.  
   
“As you know,” he said. He spoke in his same, soft, confessional voice. “You’ve always known,” he said. “And so I want to.”  
“Ever the romantic,” Yes, tease him. Don’t let him know how much it means to you, that he says these things to you. “Oh mon amant, no other person is like you.”  
“That word,” he said, quiet as a whisper, the merest hint of malice. “Laugh at me again, then. Go on.”  
   
But by now I had no intention of doing so. Instead I’d begun to move my hand over his again, touching the tips of his fingers, turning his hand over to draw a line on his palm, my other arm tight around his waist. The room had become very still. It seemed I could no longer look at him. I could smell him, though. God, I could smell him. I felt his hand at the side of my face. He kissed me this time. It wasn’t forceful, but his mouth was open, and it was just as sweet. When we pulled apart I felt him move against me, felt his smooth body against mine. The sweater was cashmere. Because I liked it.  
   
“You want this?” I said, into his neck. “You really want this?”  
“Yes.”  
“You’re certain?”  
 “Yes,” he said, and it was too much for me, almost too much. His softness, his lightness. His hand at my hip still, motionless, but the kind of motionless that is so close to motion. I wanted him so much. Enough to wish – vainly, stupidly - that I might actually be able to do it to him.  
   
So say it, I told myself. Lance the wound. Tell him. If you can’t have this, then have honesty. Tell him that the guilt still haunts me, that his life now is proof of what a terrible creature I am. It’d almost come out in session, and he had listened so patiently, not understanding, but almost believing.  
“I come willingly, Lestat,” he said. “Always willingly.”  
There, I thought. There’s your opening. Honesty. See if he still loves you after that.  
   
But I failed. Of course I failed. It shouldn’t surprise you. My talents and abilities, while legendary and varied, do not include speaking frankly with Louis, and they never have. Our performance is regulated to the letter, and it has no room for improvisation. Even in the therapist’s office, even with his prompting, my steps are written, my responses pre-ordained. Louis’ strategies were exhausted now, and this was the last of them, and I was, as ever, completely unsuccessful at allowing myself to be managed by them. I dropped my hands.  
“Yes, but you do have a tendency to whine about it later.”  
   
His expression froze. It should have chilled me, or hurt me, but it didn’t. It seemed inevitable and wearisome, even when he spoke. “It’s not going to be like that,” he said. “It’s simply not the same thing.”  
  
“But you’re the same Louis,” I said, or someone said, some other person, in the cruelest, most dismissive voice it could muster. “What you say and what you want are seldom on speaking terms. You’ll forgive me if I don’t wish to be implicated in suicide.”  
   
It was like a match to petrol. As I’d known it would be. He jerked upright as if I’d slapped him. As I’d known he would. I felt his anger, but I didn’t really feel it. It seemed to happen in another place, as if it had happened already.  
“You patronize me!” he said. “You take my choices away from me. Well, I’m choosing now.”  
He was clearly struggling to articulate the situation himself. He needn’t have bothered. I knew what it was.  
“I patronize _you_? Is that the worst you can accuse me of? I can think of better things. Why don’t you really attack me, if you’re going to do so at all?”  
“Because I don’t want to!” he said, almost shouting. Almost. For Louis, this was a shout. “I was trying to… you’re insufferable!”  
   
Yes, but I was good at Bach, so I didn’t have to say anything. Louis, quietly fuming on the piano stool, muttered something to himself but I didn’t listen. I concentrated on the music. “Stop playing that, please,” he said. “It’s distracting.”  
   
I did so immediately. The last note rang out, and all was silence. Yet he still didn’t get up. Instead, he curled his hands around the piano stool as if he were drawing strength from it.  
   
“It’s an irreparable disaster,” he said. “I acknowledge that this is so. We are, both of us, monsters from a terrible nightmare. Not because of our fangs, but because of our most secret thoughts, our personalized torments. But I…”  
“You ought to write,” I said. “It’s a shame that you never published anything else after your biography.”  
“Daniel wrote that,” said Louis. “He merely quoted me. Besides, you hate my biography.”  
“Yes, but it was beautifully written,” I said, charitably.  
“Don’t change the subject!” he said, and again I heard an unmistakable note of disbelief.  
   
Why not change it, I thought. Isn’t this subject done to terrible death? We can’t live together, we know that. The only way to do it is to pretend we aren’t doing it, to live like that, in constant yet pleasant, denial. Failing to acknowledge it in no way means that it isn’t happening.  
   
“Disaster,” I said. “Bad stars.”  
“All of it is bad,” Louis sighed, using a third kind of sigh I hadn’t anticipated. Misery, anger, something a few shades darker than any of his previous efforts. “Everything about our… I hesitate to call it a relationship… is bad. It was conceived under a bad sign, and the fact that I…”  
“Love me.”  
“I do love you! But it falters before that. It means nothing. Perhaps it reflects the universe, perhaps it’s an expression of pure entropy, and we cannot introduce work to a system already closed.”  
I rolled my eyes. “Intellectuals.”  
   
“Yes, because you’re not one, of course,” he said bitterly. “Not Dionysus in San Francisco, not the avant garde assembler of a thousand texts, the hungry orphan at the banquet of a thousand stories. You write post-modern religious novels, but you write them accidentally. Not because you’re an intellectual.”  
“I don’t even know what post-modern means.”   
“Bullshit,” said Louis.  
“There, now you’ve ruined it. It was so beautifully profound before, and now you’re just swearing.”  
 “Alright,” he said, standing up. “I’ll get my things.”  
   
I started to play the last fugue. It cuts off abruptly at bar 239. Nobody knows why. Not everybody believes that it was intended to be a quadruple contrupunctal either. In fact, it’s usually called Fuga a three Soggetti, for three voices, as if it would never be finished. I, personally, believed in Bach’s vision, and it had pleased me very much when I had learned that in German notation, B sharp is represented by the letter H, so the final revolution of the fugue actually included his own name. I liked that, the presence of Bach’s personality in the piece, as if it were really his own fugue, as if I were close to him by playing it. It was similar to my own work in that regard, I thought, and I liked to think was the sort of thing I’d have come up with, had I been interested in that kind of composition. Post-modern or not. Actually, inserting one’s own name into a work is rather modernist, if we’re being specific, but such definitions are better left to people who don’t know how to actually make or appreciate art.  
   
Momentarily, Louis came in again, I assumed to say goodbye, since he had his coat on, a black, frocked affair in the style to which he was accustomed. He had put his hair behind his ears – long, uncut, for me, but for how much longer? - and some books under his arm. Mojo had followed him, assuming that all of this movement meant walkies.  
“Will you take the dog out before you go?” I asked him. “I’m busy here.” I’d started to bleed ‘Werewolves of London’ into the fugue and it felt promising. A searing disjunct, an unsettling contradiction. Over which I held a tenuous control.  
   
“He’s your dog,” Louis said. “I’m going now.”  
“He’s your dog too, now,” I said. “He loves you. You can’t abandon him like this.”  
“I hardly think that living here for three nights has assured me ownership of Mojo, even in part.”  
“You mustn’t say ownership,” I was appalled. “He’ll hear you. You can’t own an animal like Mojo. He merely deigns to live with us.”  
“With you,” Louis corrected.  
   
Mojo was excitedly pawing at Louis’ feet, insomuch as his advanced years would allow him to display such a puppyish emotion as excitement. Louis petted him absently. As he turned, the dog turned too.  
“He’ll cry,” I said. I’ll cry, I didn’t say.  
   
Louis gave another deep sigh, strode to the sideboard and collected the lead. He put down the books.  
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll take him out. I’ll bring him back. And then I’ll go.”  
 I nodded.  
“Really?” he asked. “Nothing else?”  
But I concentrated on playing. I thought hard, about how it sounded. I heard him leave too, but I didn’t watch him.

 

I was good and angry by the time they returned. Louis hadn’t taken the key I’d left for him, and I had to let him in. It seemed he expected me to exchange the dog for the books, but I wouldn’t do it.  
“Please,” he said. “I haven’t finished the Baudrillard.”  
“Come in for just a minute, though.”  
“I’d really rather not.”  
   
I took Mojo’s lead and let him off it. He stepped over the threshold and pushed up against my legs, but Louis still wouldn’t come in. “It doesn’t matter about my things,” he said, and he turned to leave.     
“You can’t just say that, open that discussion, and expect me to assimilate it. It was selfish of you.”  
   
Louis paused in mid-step. “Excuse me?”  
“About the…” I paused too, when I realized how loudly I was speaking while we were still on the stoop, “about the sex, Louis.”  
A faint pink flush crept over Louis’ white cheeks. “Perhaps I’d better come in.”  
“If you’d be so kind.”  
   
I closed the door behind him and folded my arms. The dog walked into the lounge rather cautiously, so I unfolded myself for the purposes of petting him. Ruffling his fur seemed to reassure him somewhat, though he regarded us both with suspicion as he stalked towards the kitchen. He’d be thirsty, I thought. I knew the feeling.  
“What took you so long, anyway?” I said, to Louis.  
“Look,” Louis said, “I apologize. Not for all of it, but about that you’re absolutely right, and I should apologize.”  
   
I hadn’t expected that. “You didn’t feed in front of the dog, did you?”  
“No, of course not,” he answered, walking through into the main room. “You asked me not to. I hope I’m not given to helpless compulsion.”  
“Why don’t you take off your coat?”  
“I won’t stay,” he said. “You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t have… I should have expected you to… but I must tell you that my own reaction is… such that I’m not able to anticipate yours.”  
   
I stopped. “What?”  
“I should have,” said Louis. “You have sexual hang-ups, just as I do.”  
“It sounds odd when you say it, sexual hang-ups,” I said.  
“You do, though.”  
I thought about it for a little while before answering. I didn’t really want to answer. Sexual hang-ups. How terribly mundane. It made me burn with embarrassment. I looked away from him.  
   
Louis sat down on the edge of the sofa, not really on it. He sighed, catching his clasped hands between his knees.  
“Look,” he said, again. It’s strange that he says that, I realize now. Look. He’s never asking me to look at anything. “You are, as you’ve told me, a person,” he said. “I’m afraid I failed to consider this earlier, but I am doing so now, or at least I am attempting to do so. This makes it easier for me to forgive you, but more difficult for me to anticipate you. I suspect that my understanding of the way you think about these things is… not false but…”  
   
I didn’t react. But I would have. Trapped by my own words! The cruelty of it! In the Chevette, in Fairhope, I’d said this to him, and he’d kept it tucked away somewhere as if what I’d said then had mattered, as if I’d given permission that that part of me be included in what I was. But that was a week ago! And I’d been trying to pull him, and nobody’s supposed to remember what I said, not if I haven’t written it in, not if I said it out of desperation. I thought desperately now for a way to stop him. He’d trailed off, but if he was going to be in the flat, he was going to talk, that much was clear, and it was not what I’d wanted. But the other option was to make him leave again, and I couldn’t do that. It would make me look crazy.  
   
“I’m also angry,” Louis said.  
“About what?” I snapped, suddenly rather angry myself. “You can’t be angry at me for having hang-ups. That’s not fair. It breaks the rules.”  
“What rules?” Louis asked, and it seemed a real question, not a rhetorical one. “Are there rules?”  
   
I didn’t say anything about that either. Of course there were rules. He loved me and he did what I said and he didn’t ask me uncomfortable questions. I shouldn’t have had to remind him. But evidently they’d stretched enough for him to lose, or appear to lose, all of his previous anxiety and it confused me. My cues felt awkwardly unscripted because of it, and it agitated me that I had to reach for a response. I shouldn’t have let him anger me. Not about this nonsense. I walked over toward the piano, intending to take up my previous position and find some clarity in that. But I didn’t get to. Because he spoke.  
“Because I think you preferred it when I resisted you and you tried to rape me,” he said.  
   
He may as well have struck me. My ears were ringing as if he had hit me. Though I must have made some physical reaction, because he spoke again.  
“That’s what it is,” he said, as if I hadn’t understood. “The word is correct.”  
   
Had I moved then? I hadn’t immediately noticed. At some point I’d begun pacing, clenching my hands, but I don’t know when I began to do this, when he first spoke, or later. It happened at some point, but I don’t know if it was then. What I do know is that I still hadn’t answered him, and this seemed to frustrate him a little. But I had absolutely no idea what I would have said.  
“Perhaps you can understand why I may have found your...”  
“Shut up!” I yelled. He stopped.  
   
But that was all he did. Stop speaking. My shouting had had no visible physical effect on Louis, none at all. I hadn’t scared him. He didn’t flinch. He seemed as still as the eye of a hurricane. Having said his piece, he had leaned back against the sofa, his eyes upon me, confident and composed. It made me furious.  
“Shut up, you utter, utter bastard! How dare you say that?”  
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said, calmly.  “I’m telling you that I’m angry, but I’m not asking for recompense.”  
“But you…” But what? But something! Oh God. He only waited. Or at least he seemed to. He gave me a short grace period and then he continued.    
   
“I’m simply telling you that I thought I was doing what you wanted. But perhaps that was my mistake.”  
“You vindictive, malicious prick!” I shouted, from nowhere. “That’s _bullshit_! How do you expect me to respond to an accusation like that?”  
   
Louis’ posture remained perfect. The blunt arrogance of this seemed more calculated than his words. He’d forgotten whom he spoke to when he said, “I hadn’t intended it as an accusation. I assumed you would see the truth of it as I did. I thought we might talk.”  
   
“You expected… who do you think I _am_ , you Goddamned sanctimonious cunt!” I shouted. He tensed a little at that. At my language. I didn’t care. I was not inclined to moderate my choice of words. “You vicious… you interpret events exactly the way you want to, don’t you? You’ll never admit you did anything! God! Get out of my flat!”  
He didn’t move. “That’s really how you see it?”  
   
“That’s how it _is_ ,” I said. Low, threatening. But Louis wouldn’t get up, he wouldn’t move, he was challenging me, and I wondered if he knew how horrifying that was. Don’t you realize what I’ll do, you fool? I’m that hurricane. Proposition me, and the result will be more terrible than you can possibly imagine.  
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I felt myself hissing. “You want to examine your words.”  
   
Louis folded his hands. His gaze, upon mine, was unbroken, and suddenly it had become very firm. That was unsettling. Enough that I had to recalibrate. He was harder now, meaner. A little more vampire, a little less human, and I forgot this too easily. Yet it seemed dangerous to say. That he had changed, as if the old Louis was dead forever.  
“You think I’m afraid of you,” he said, and there was a glimmer of something in it. He couldn’t read me. He could never read me. “I’m not. You also think you’re stronger than me. You’re not.”  
   
Tiger, I thought. Not stronger. But tyger, tyger, more powerful by a magnitude of years. I’m a creature from a terrible nightmare, I’m in the jungle again. And there’s Louis, for whom this symmetry seemed fearful not at all, sitting blithely against the pattern of the sofa, and the wallpaper that I had particularly chosen, a garden of pattern, because that was what I liked. It might have been then, that I’d started pacing. I don’t know. Translation is awkward, but it seems narratively appropriate, that it might have happened there. There was malice in him, I could smell it, feel it in the room. It was as if he genuinely wanted to goad me, and this was incongruous with his frail seeming body, and something in me that was like a tiger woke up at that.  
   
“That’s stupid,” I said. “That’s fucking stupid. This is idiocy. Shut up.”  
“It isn’t,” he said. “I am as strong as you are, or almost. Physically. I thought you’d remembered.”   
“That’s not true,” I said. “It’s impossible. You might have it, but you don’t know what to do with it. And don’t tell me what I think.”  
“Come over here,” he said.  
I didn’t move.  
“Lestat,” he said, because he could, he could say my name as if it were an endearment, though I could never say his this way.  
   
But that was old Louis. He’d done that. So he wasn’t dead yet, and this disoriented me. Unless I had done it already, and this was possible too. That I imagined him. The old Louis was dead now and this new one was speaking.  
“Lestat,” he said, again, in the same voice. In the same gentle, petting voice and I did nothing. It was impossible to do anything. His face had changed again and it looked tired. Almost sympathetic. “Please come here.”  
   
“Get out,” I said. While you still can, I added, though not aloud. I didn’t need to. He could hear me by now. He had to know how tenuous my not killing him was. He spoke to me as if he were safe. As if he were entitled. But the tiger in me is like the movies. It has no real memory. It doesn’t know that every ending has been the same. It has purpose only, it drives to narrative conclusion. End him, I thought. Silence him now. Those were my only memories.  
   
Perhaps that was why he paused. For a moment I saw him thinking, but I held my face firm.  
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”  
“That’s what you’re going to do. Because I have told you to do it.”  
   
He held my gaze for almost a minute. I didn’t flinch. I would stare him down for just as long as he stared at me. And then, eventually, he looked away.    
“Yes, alright,” he said, sighing. “I suppose it’s better discussed it at session.”   
“Not on your un-life,” I said. “I’m not going anymore. If it gives you carte blanche to say whatever you want, no matter what it means to me, then I’ve had enough.”  
   
I expected him to argue the point, but he didn’t. He looked at me a moment longer, not quite upset by it, not quite weary. Just flat. As if whatever energy had bade him to speak to me as he had had now dissipated. But he was not frightened, as he should have been, and again I wondered if he knew just what he had stepped through without noticing. Apparently not.  
“That’s fine,” he said. That was all he said. He stood up, and turned to leave. Just like that! The movement blazed across my skin. The very casualness of his actions was an insult.  
   
“You unbelievable bastard!” I shouted. “You just say… how dare you say that! And if I won’t answer it the way you like, you leave?”  
He paused. When he spoke again, it was measured. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “Didn’t you want me to leave?”  
“Goddamned _bastard_!” I spat, not answering his question, knowing I wasn’t answering it.  
Louis thinned his lips. “I’m not sure why you…”  
   
“Such incredible arrogance,” I said. “Such elision of fact, such presumption.”  
“Lestat,” he said, and it did not sound like an endearment. “Do you want me to go, or to stay?”  
“A burnt offering, fucking. Well I don’t want it, not from you, not with those conditions attached.”  
“I’m going,” he said, coloring once more. Interesting that this blush smelt no different from the previous. Stronger, perhaps. Then again, I imagined could smell him blushing across the city. He was blushing furiously at this, though he gave no other physical indication of his discomfort. “I’m sorry.”  
   
“Nor your love,” I said, scathingly. “Not that you ever did love me. What a fool I was, to be taken in by that. You’d have made good long before now, if it were true.”  
“Your definition of love is rather particular,” Louis said, and the blush was receding. He seemed to be fighting it back. But it was enough. It was a fissure. I felt my powers returning.  
   
“Are you mad at me?” I taunted him. “Are you angry? Am I refusing to act the script you’ve written? Come on, then.”  
“I won’t fight with you,” he said. “I don’t want to. And please stop looking at me like that. You look as though you’re hungry.”  
“It’s because you’re blushing.” I smiled at him. A good, evil smile. I moved towards him in a manner that he must have understood. “I can smell it. I can smell the blood. Can’t you?”  
   
Louis’s response was somewhere between a wince and a sigh. He closed his eyes momentarily, and then he looked into to mine. I felt the stab. I relished it. “You never blush,” he said, in a voice too resigned to be scathing as mine had been. “You lack the necessary shame.”  
Ah. Yes. Beautiful. Everything now was choreographed. Now we were in familiar territory.  
   
So I did the only thing I could. I slid towards him then, quickly. He stepped backwards, but too slowly, and I caught him. One arm around his waist, the other grasping his wrist. His slim body folded against mine so easily, as if it had never been separated.  
“Go on, list my deficiencies then,” I hissed, into his ear. “You know how to do that, don’t you? To tell me how rotten I am? To tell me that you don’t love what I do to you? Don’t pussy out on what you’ve started now, or is that too much to expect from you?”  
   
He tried to fight away from me, but I wouldn’t let him. If he was, in fact, as strong as he claimed to be, he’d have to mean it if he really wanted to win, I’d see to that. I kissed his neck, sliding my hand into his, and his angular, grudging acceptance of this demonstrated just how much weaker than me he really was. Louis froze on the brink of tearing my hand off of my wrist. But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t. I knew him too well for that. Darling Louis, I thought, how I love you, how I love you for letting me hurt you.  
   
I relished it for a moment before pushing him harshly away from me. He stumbled. But he caught himself, and his expression was far, far more contained than it should have been. He hadn’t lost his composure, and that meant he hadn’t been listening. I felt the wildness surge forward again as he looked up, straight into my face as if I were merely a difficult problem. Oh Louis, I thought. Show a little humility. You’re in such danger.   
“You know what I want,” he said. “I have nothing else to say.”  
“Oh, you do,” I said. I moved towards him again. He didn’t step backwards this time. Arrogance. “You want to justify yourself, mon petit. It may just save your life. David gets to talk about that. You don’t. You come willingly, as you’ve said. Or was that part the lie, and this is the truth now?”  
  
“I didn’t say anything about that,” he said. “This isn’t about David. It’s not about you giving me any… this is about…”  
“About fucking?”  
“I wish you’d stop using that word.”  
“Fucking?” I said. “You want me to stop saying fucking? Is it upsetting your scruples, you fucking puritan?”  
He said nothing but his displeasure was obvious on his face.  
   
“Fucking,” I said, childishly.  I didn’t get an answer for that either. He didn’t even flinch. I felt chastised, and I felt mean. It didn’t matter, however. His throat was inches from me, and I’d kill him. Or at least, and this seemed far, far more appealing at the time, I would make him wish I had.  
“Don’t you want me anymore?” I asked him, sweetly. “You’re so inconsistent with your affections. I’ll enjoy fucking you while I’m fucking you up.”  
   
Oh, stop. Keep your judgments. I don’t want to hear them. You’re the one who wanted to know. Don’t get angry with me now because I’m telling you. He should have listened. I warned him just as frequently as I’ve warned you. The steps were written, and he knew them as well as you do. Better, since he’d written half of them. We don’t talk about the universe. We don’t talk about nothingness, and you don’t talk about me, I thought. I do, I write that. And the close-up comes only when I am ready. Well, here it is. How do you like it? Shall I tell you that he looked up at me then, hurt and shocked, and that his sorrow tore my heart out of my chest? It did. But equally, and more truly, I had no sympathy for him at all. I felt his blood filling my mouth. I saw myself kissing him. Both of these at once.    
   
So I have no idea why I let him do it. I was close enough to him that he couldn’t have moved without my permission, but it seemed to last for whole minutes, this evaluation of me, this stillness, this open frailty. It wasn’t until he put his head in his hands that I’d realized I’d dropped mine. His body appeared to collapse while it was still standing. He shook his head. Aesthetic appeal. God, he was beautiful. But no sympathy.  
  
“I am so sick of this,” Louis said, finally. I could hear the French in his voice, more pronounced than it had been just a moment ago, as if his American inflections had collapsed with his body. “This is just… you’re a monster.”  
   
It had stunned me a little, his speaking with such exhausted disdain when he knew how powerful I was. “I know,” I said haughtily, quickly, to restabilize. “I was born this way. You already told me. You need knew insults, bébé. That one’s tired.”  
“I think you try to make me hate you,” he said. “I think that’s what you’re doing. I love you so much, but you don’t want me to, and it’s so stupid that I won’t just accept that. I’m so sorry that I’ve… I’m sorry for this. Of course I’ll go.”  
   
Because if he couldn’t beat me with words, he’d do it with weakness, I realized. Well, I was hip to that trick, even as I felt a vile, merciless tenderness filling the vacancy where my heart had been. I felt sick with the guilt of it, but I knew it, I recognized it, and I wouldn’t be fooled this time. You _deserve it_ , I thought. The proof is that you believe it. I opened my mouth to tell him so.  
   
“Don’t let me halt your rewriting of history, my love,” I said.  “Why don’t you tell me another story? I am a monster and you are an innocent. My fairytale princess. You don’t manipulate. You’re not, despite the fact that you are, a common cock-tease.”  
   
Louis made a strange expression then, as if registering something. Shit, had any of that been true? I hadn’t intended to tell the truth, I’d just wanted to gut him. I’d have said anything if it would have ripped that soft-hearted righteousness out of him. But I’d lost energy and so had delivered a weak blow, and he’d thrown it off.  
   
No. No, that was stupid. Paranoia. It was the vulgarity. That had been coarse even for me. And that must have been what it was, because he put his hand over his face again, pained, his expression one of delicate repulsion, and I wanted to smack him.  
“Alright,” he said. “Alright, enough. You’ve won, I’m sorry. Please don’t contact me for a little while.”  
   
A direct hit. Oh, that had been calculated, I have no doubt about that. A vocal withdrawal of his affections, I knew that step well. I laughed. It probably sounded hollow, but it was genuine. The black comedy of our varied failures did actually strike me as humorous. He looked up at that, offended, I thought, that I hadn’t bought his performance. As if it matters, I wanted to tell him. Be grateful you’re not dead.     
   
I didn’t say that, though. “Truth hurts,” I said, coldly, leaning against the door-frame and examining my nails. I intended that to cut too, and it had. I knew that even without looking at him. I could smell the blood. It was glorious. Powerful. Just as it had two hundred years ago. Or ten years ago too, I remembered that, I’d remember it always. How could I forget when I’d been looking at it tonight, every bit of human softness gone from him, and I couldn’t even love him anymore. It seemed easier to look at my own hand, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t smell him.  
   
Louis narrowed his eyes. I saw him do that in my peripheral vision. It thrilled me that I’d made him angry, and a part of me wanted to underscore the point. I think I was about to, even, but I was too slow for it, because his expression folded in on itself and he looked hurt again. Not just hurt, bereft. As if I’d exhausted him. Don’t do that, I wanted to say. That’s not a fair move, that’s a body blow. And I warned you.  
“… endless...” he said. “I can’t even be bothered to finish this statement.”  
   
I said nothing. I turned away and stalked across the room, my back to him. I wouldn’t engage on these new terms, and fuck him for initiating them. He sighed.  
“I wish you’d…”  
But he never finished, and I never answered.  
   
He collected his books from the sideboard, I think. I wasn’t watching, but it seemed like that was what he was doing. He put something in his pocket, but I didn’t know what it was. That had better not be my key, I thought. Though it might have been his, for the Chevette. The Chevette had to be somewhere around, I doubted he’d walked here. Though it didn’t matter. I’d picked up my pile of sheet music from the top of the piano and had begun to examine it. All was devastation, and all was stillness.  
“I’ll call you,” he said.  
“You’d better not.”  
Another sigh. It grated. I wanted him gone.  
   
That is, he actually began to leave. He had to walk past me to do it, and how foolish that was. Bold, and stupid, and my God, he deserved to be educated about that. His movements were casual, resigned and unguarded, and they bolted through me like jagged lightening, my fury lurching forward as if saving itself from death. I moved without knowing it. I bit my own lip, grabbed his arm, jerked him towards me and kissed him.  
   
At first he struggled, trying to push me away, but I held him fast. His protests were beautiful. His lips were soft and so breakable, and I could feel him trying to speak. There was no way I would let him. The scent of his closeness. That blood at the surface, no memory, only purpose. I felt his hands come behind my head, felt him begin to suckle at my lip, gently pulling on it. The music had all dropped to the floor, and the books, and even in this pulsing ecstasy, even in this pure vicious closeness, I thought how poetic that was.  
   
When I moved away he was dumbstruck, his mouth red and smeared, Persephone having carelessly eaten the pomegranate and now dazzled by the consequences. Then spell broke and Louis shoved me hard and I fell back against the piano. His face took on a look of enraged disbelief, his mouth still red where I had kissed him, becoming a grimace. I grinned.  
   
“Of course,” he said, wiping the blood away as if disgusted by it. “This is the only way you can do it. Well, I’m not interested, do you hear me? I’m not interested in playing this game with you.”  
“You love the game,” I said, leering at him. “You love it. You’re just as sick as I am, just as vicious. You pretend you’re not, but you are.”  
   
He said nothing aloud, but his expression spoke volumes. It was one of total contempt, complete dismissal, and in a way, that was the exact proof I needed. He was like me after all, perhaps not in style or manner, but absolutely in unkindness. There was no other way he could have looked at me like that. Just a flick of his eyes, and yet it cut me so deeply that for a moment I didn’t exist. And the next moment, I knew I shouldn’t. Nothing so shameful should exist here. “Careful what you wish for,” I said, but oh, my grin was pasted on now. “Get the fuck out of my flat, you miserable coward.”  
   
Louis’ expression had not changed.  “I am a coward,” he said. “But I’m nothing like the kind of coward you are.”  
“… the fuck?” his boldness had honestly shocked me.  
“I will ask you to apologize for that.”  
Louis standing there. Louis looking at me. What in the hell was wrong with him? Was he insane? “I’m not going to apologize,” I said. “Why the hell should I?”  
“You know perfectly well,” he said. “You know what you tried to do.”  
“You liked it.”  
But he said nothing.  
   
“No,” I said. “I’m not the one who has to apologize, not after what you said to me.”  
“Yes,” he said in return. “What would you have done, if I’d let you? Would you have accepted it then?”   
“You wanted it. I could feel it.”  
Again he was silent.  
“Fuck you, I’m not going to.”  
“You are,” he said, but nothing further. How tense my body was, I realized. The therapist told me this all the time. I was tense, I was always tense. I could never relax. It was a failing. It was something else I did wrong.  
“Oh, whine some more, Louis. Leave if you can’t take it. I told you to leave.”  
   
And Louis did not move, and once again, I registered his open defiance. It was intoxicating. His entire body punctuating the space, stopping it. I could smell every bit of this. I could feel every breath. I could die here, I thought. In the moment before violence.  No time, no guilt, no movement. The piano was hard against my back as if I’d fallen, every muscle was spring-loaded and evidently Louis couldn’t read my thoughts after all, because his face had solidified in hatred without recourse to fear. He was so white and his eyes so vibrant that they seemed a conduit to some other place, and the totality of those particulars was horrible. Sometimes in these moments, when Louis’ face was unguarded, I saw flashes of what he really was. A creature. A monster.  
   
“But what’s happening?” the creature said. “Lestat?”  
   
Nothing’s happening! I wanted to shout. But nothing had come out either, and I couldn’t feel where I would have said it. I could feel something pulling at me, the sensation of a loose vacancy in my left eye, where I always felt it, where it had been scratched out of its socket during my sojourn in hell. Disassociation, the therapist called it, when I would begin to feel as if I wasn’t here, begin to see and feel things that were, in fact, unreal. Oh, mon Dieu! What a thing to remember then! But I had, and the wood under my back but that wasn’t real either. Another person’s body.  
   
I’d put my hand there, I realized, up to my eye, covering it. Louis asked his question again and I wanted to answer. There was a spot of blood on the sweater from when I had kissed him. He seemed not to notice. I did though, I noticed. He took my blood, bastard. I hadn’t wanted to give it. But perhaps he’d restrain me, hold me down. Perhaps he could now. Perhaps I might scratch at him and wound him as I had done before, but it wouldn’t hurt and I’d let him forgive me. The caveat of insanity, how I hated to use it, I hated to give myself away like this, but I couldn’t move the hand because something terrible would happen if I did. I might lose the eye for good. He wouldn’t be fast enough to shove it into my mouth.  
   
He was probably still speaking. I don’t know what the hell he said, but in my memory, I know I wanted so much to answer, I was trying to answer, I was going to say, yes, shut up, we’re fighting, don’t do this, stop looking like that, you terrify me, but it wouldn’t work. His face had shifted again, but in slow motion. Something like softness moved over it, and it didn’t make any sense, not here. I registered its malleability and remembered – hours ago, minutes? – I’d seen him smile quickly and understood how fluid he was, but I didn’t want to know that now. It was too terrifying that he not be static and with the unoccupied hand I gripped the top of the piano until it splintered.  
   
“Something’s wrong with my eye,” I managed to say. I waited for him to speak instead, to say something, anything, because until he did, all of this was a cottony nightmare, a watercolor blotting of the real scene. When he spoke it would solidify. When he spoke. Not that monster, but Louis.  
   
“Nothing’s wrong with your eye,” he said. He had stepped closer to me, cautiously.  
“It’s come out.”  
“Nothing is wrong with your eye,” he said, again. “It’s still there.  
“I can feel it, Louis, it’s my damned eye.”  
“Nothing is…” he started to say, but he never got to finish the sentence because he was too close to me by then, and I hit him.  
   
I hit him hard, in the face, hard enough that he had to step back. Though somehow, it seemed he barely registered the impact at all. I had made him bleed. I’d made him bite his lip or something, because he bled a little there, but he didn’t, or wouldn’t, wipe it away. He stood still. Wipe it! I thought. Damn you, don’t make me smell your blood! Please God! Then, after some moments, he raised one eyebrow and I moved to hit him again.  
   
He caught my hand. It didn’t even give him pause. Not really. He wiped the blood away finally, with his other hand. But only barely, as if it were a minor annoyance.  
“Must you?” he said, with absolute composure, and I was absolutely stunned.  
“Don’t you…” I started to say.  
“Don’t what?” he demanded. “Don’t exist? Is that what you want from me? I can’t seem to say or do anything to please you, so perhaps I should just cease to exist, like one of your discarded amants de passage. Perhaps we’ll all comfort each other. I wonder if Tarquin is busy.”  
   
Even in blind rage, I was not stupid enough to pick up that bait. I pulled my hand out of his.  
“Exist somewhere else,” I said. “Simple.”  
“But you don’t actually want that. And I wish I knew why you said it.”  
“Because!” I said. “Because! Louis! Goddamn you!”  
   
“Why don’t you hit me again?” he said, with an undercurrent of such violence that I was actually a little frightened by it. “Why don’t you find out what I’ll do in response?”  
“Louis,” I said, but then nothing.  
“What?” he said, sharply, almost like a shot. I looked for reassurance in his face, for softness, but there was none. He was still as a statue, as still as if he were in his grave, and he gave me nothing. Nothing but the eyes. They were a vacuum. Look away, I thought. Look away before his face changes back into something horrible. I turned my own face to the side, staring at the floor.  
   
“Stubborn,” I said. “Always so stubborn.” The room was an incomplete fugue, contrapunct without the beginning canon, and it made me want to laugh. Such music. Hilarious.  
“I am what you made me.”  
“I can unmake you too,” I said. “Don’t forget about that.”  
“Oh mon dieu, shut up!” Louis snapped. “Empty, tedious threats. I have better things to do than listen to this.”  
“So go and do them,” I said, but I trembled when I did. At the verge of what I couldn’t say. Maybe I would laugh. Maybe you could tell a person what you’re doing when you do, I wanted to say.  
“Perhaps I will,” he said. He made one of his Victorian faces, as if he were talking about something quite beneath him. “There was clearly little wisdom in the decision to… proposition you as I did.”  
   
His statement was unavoidably hysterical. Even in the midst of all this, this high strung, vicious violence, this naked cruelty and terror. It was ridiculous to laugh now. Utterly stupid. But I couldn’t help it. It caused me literal pain, I laughed so hard. Maybe none of it mattered at all. Maybe there was some salvation in that. “Mon cher, this propriety…”  
Louis gave a weary sigh. He put a hand to his forehead.  
“Yes, that’s right. Laugh at me. I suppose that’s what I deserve.”  
   
His discomfort was palatable in his accent. He gave a truncated version of his French shrug, and I appreciated it, but I also noticed that his American voice had slipped off of him again. Perhaps he put it on. Perhaps this new Louis was entirely fictional. Perhaps that was the fiction, rather than, as I had naively assumed, the limit and sanctity of my body. But I didn’t have time to contemplate that. He was still speaking,  
   
“It’s hilarious. I admit it,” he said, and I’d really hurt his feelings, I realized. He gave little indication of this besides the accent, but the accent was telling. He’d forgive me for hitting him, instantly. I’d hit him, and he’d fought back but I’d done that before and that was just fighting. This was different. I’d only laughed, but it had wounded him. As if there was violence in that too. It broke my heart a little, his sulky self-righteousness. It was almost erotic.  
   
So I squeezed his arm quickly, and smiled. “It is,” I began, and I was going to follow it with kindnesses, with gentle teasing and adoration. I really was. I would have done exactly that, it would have been exemplary. Louis, however, was not interested.  
   
“But at least I do admit it,” he said. “You, by comparison, admit nothing. Mon dieu, but I have put work into this. And you don’t even seem to care. It’s like speaking to an especially aggressive brick wall.”  
“I come to your ridiculous therapy sessions, what else do you want?”  
“I want you to stop being an asshole,” he snapped, coloring, briefly.  
   
That scent again. I was taken aback. I didn’t mind being an evil fiend, but I did, as it happened, mind being an asshole. I was furious, of course, but underneath that I felt the unmistakable throb of genuine hurt feelings. An asshole was such a pedestrian thing to be.  
   
“Why does it make you so defensive?” he said, cruelly taking advantage of my silence, my own palatable reaction. “Isn’t it what you always wanted? Why wouldn’t you get over it, whatever it was, and bite my damned neck?”  
Because you don’t know what you’re asking, you petty, naïve, imbecile.  
“I can’t get over it,” I yelled, “don’t you know that after what I just did? I did just what you’re asking me and you’re still unhappy! I can’t ever get over it. I’m incapable!”  
   
“You are not incapable,” Louis said, in a similar tone. “You know the difference, and that’s a poor excuse. And it’s one that I happen to be sick of.”  
“What are you, curing me now? Get out of my flat, didn’t I tell you to get out? This is ridiculous.”  
“It has nothing to do with…!” he shouted. But he paused in mid shout and put a hand to his lip. He seemed lost for words for a moment, or lost for phrasing. When he began again, his tone was level. Hard, dismissive and judgmental, but level. “Honestly, I wanted to correct you.”  
“Oh god, Louis, why?”  
   
He gave a small, dignified shrug, barely balanced upon obvious, though graciously contained fury. I appreciated the gesture. I appreciated the elaborate performance of him. I wanted to kiss him again. That shrug. It kills me. “It bothers me,” he said. “Philosophically. What you say about yourself and what you do. You’re inconsistent. You should be aware of that, you’re intelligent enough. And yet you never are. I suspect you lack the self-reflection.”  
   
Somehow I managed to navigate two equally explosive sensations. Nothing he could have possibly said would have been more hypocritical. Or more aggravating. Or patronizing or demeaning or any number of applicable synonyms for being a pretentious son of a bitch who had no damned business speaking to me at all. And yet, nothing could have been more intriguing either. Just how much of his time did he spend thinking about me? The best I could manage in response was a vibrating near-silence. _I_ am inconsistent? I thought. _I_?  
   
But Louis was still talking. “I am inclined to leave,” he continued. “I am also entitled to do so without regret, given your sensationally childish performance. But I am forced to acknowledge that I do not have anywhere pressing to be.”  
“So you thought you’d stay here and talk down to me? How very kind of you.”  
“More or less. With an eternity to occupy, for which I – of course - thank you, I may as well.”  
   
I snorted. It was the only possible response to something so perverse. And something as malicious as it was polite. He might have been stronger, and with a larger vocabulary, but he was still Louis, the snake in the garden, the Gentleman Jerk.  
“If we’re going to bandy the word “asshole” about, mon chaton,” I said, “I might equally apply it to you.”  
   
Louis slapped me. Open handed, across the face, like a girl. I yelped even though it didn’t hurt. It was unquestionably shocking though, and sometimes shock requires an exclamation.  
“You vulgar petit bastard prick!” I said. “What do you mean, slapping me? I should break your hand for that!”  
“You deserved it,” he said. “I should have done hours ago.”  
“I’ll kill you!” I shouted, but I didn’t move.  
“You won’t,” he said. “The threat is impotent. It was impotent even when you could have. And I’m bored by it.”  
   
“You’re the one who called me an asshole!”  
“You were being an asshole,” said Louis, both his posture and his expression daring me to come good on my threat. The smug little monster! What did he think he was doing?  
“Goddamn you, Louis, what are you trying to do? You want me to hurt you! Why do you want me to hurt you?”  
“Oh, of course,” he said. “That’s exactly what I want. I’ve come here for exactly that, it’s the subject of all my work and declarations. Please, I love you, and I genuinely want you to be cruel to me.”  
   
Sarcasm! The pathetic fool! Once again, I saw the familiar glint of fury in his eyes. Nowhere pressing to be, so he would wait forever. He was, actually, waiting forever, and this was hilarious, the sight of him standing there, looking at me like that. He was curling his lip, baring his fangs. Sweet, white fangs. As delicious as he was infuriating. Familiar, all of it familiar. Monsters from a terrible nightmare. Terrible stars.  
   
But whose fault was that? What might he have done differently? Not taken me at my word? Been more or less forceful, or less pretentious? Perhaps I would have let him challenge me if he hadn’t been so Goddamned self-righteous about it. Been, I noted, as I made my case, another person than Louis? Yet it seemed he expected me to be somebody else too, that was visible in this little charade. It came to me that we idealized each other, that we actually had no idea who the other were. Another brilliant insight to save for session, I thought, a bouquet to present to the therapist, if I were going to go.  
   
Which I was, of course. I’d always known I was, and perhaps he did too. I’d pretend that I wouldn’t for the whole week and then I would show up, probably on the motorcycle, because appearances were important under such circumstances, as if I too had nowhere else pressing to be. This whole thing was impossible. It was absolutely impossible, and suddenly, that knowledge was the only thing I could see.  
   
And just as suddenly, I was laughing again. All my protests came to nothing, and that was hilarious. Utterly hilarious. I saw his eyes widen in insult, saw him step back, saw him tense as if he were about to leap at me. But all I could think was this: oh mon cher, you are my costume for nothingness, but the universe is imploding, and what possible response could a sane being have but to laugh?  
“Come here, mon petit imbecile,” I said, pulling him towards me.  
   
He wouldn’t come. “Fuck you to hell.”  
   
I almost laughed again. Almost. Almost, but didn’t. The laughter boiled there, straining against the event horizon of its generative abyss, but I wouldn’t release it.  
“You shouldn’t hit me,” I said. “That’s a terrible thing to say, I deserved it. You’re never supposed to say that.”  
   
He gave a sharp intake of breath. You push your luck, Lestat, it said. You push it right up to the edge.  
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.  
He sighed. He seemed like he might have been crying. The sigh was ragged and his eyes were a little red, but I hadn’t seen him do it. I wondered again if time had elided somehow. There seemed several moments during which it might have. A stab of fear. Forget that now. You have a performance.    
   
“I am sorry,” I said, suddenly moved to impress it upon him. “I am. I don’t know… mon petit ami, I don’t know why I…”  
“I don’t know why I accept it,” Louis said, suddenly. I felt cold.  
“I shouldn’t have done it, Louis. I’m sorry.”  
He didn’t speak. He wasn’t going to speak. He was going to leave.

 

“You know, mon cœur,” I said, carefully, “we actually haven’t fought that much since you’ve been home.”  
“Yesterday we fought about Baudrillard.”  
That had been yesterday? It seemed years ago now. “It’s not the same. You know it’s not.”  
“It’s not home, either. It’s your flat. You clearly don’t listen when I speak to you, or you’d understand that aspect of post-structuralist philosophy. I’ve spoken about it often enough. I wish you’d see how you use language.”  
“I use it manipulatively,” I said. “I already know that.”  
“But why haven’t I left already?” he said, seeming to genuinely wonder. “You made me walk your dog.”  
   
He was so strange like that, Louis. The question was actually more interesting to him that the resolution. But I could use that manipulatively too. And I did. “Our dog, mon oie peu ridicule. Because you live with me.”  
“Excuse me?”  
“Didn’t we establish that earlier? Don’t you want to anymore?” Monsieur I’ve-Just-Brought-Some-Books-Over.  
Louis made a face. “Not particularly,” he said. “Not at this moment.”  
“Well, I am asking you to. Please stay and live with me in the flat. There’s a declaration for you. Happy?”  
   
I regretted my incidental sarcasm, but Louis graciously ignored it. “As you say now,” he said, “whereas you wouldn’t before. And you told me to leave. And you are… well, you are you. Why shouldn’t I expect it to change?”  
This was a fair question. I didn’t answer it.  
“And Blackwood,” he said. “That’s unresolved.”  
“Blackwood is my business.”  
“I think it’s better if I go,” he said. “That’s not a final indictment, we’ll discuss it tomorrow at session. But I think it’s better if I go, tonight.”  
“Aren’t we going to be in trouble for seeing each other?”  
   
I don’t know why I said that. It seemed stupid, if not somewhat pathetic that I’d said it, and Louis gave me an odd look. “One can’t ‘be in trouble’ with a therapist. That’s not quite how the process works.”  
“For you,” I said, and Louis frowned.  
“Does it seem to you that you’re being told off?”  
I chose not to answer that either. “Well, what if he says we shouldn’t live together. Are you going to listen to him?”  
“I don’t know. What do you think? Honestly.”  
“I don’t know either, Louis. He’s your therapist.”  
“He’s our therapist,” Louis said. And then he smiled, wryly, resignedly. For just a second though, and then it was gone. “Ah, that’s irony,” he said. “Narrative irony.”  
   
That little smile had hurt me. Such a short time since he’d last done it, in the scale of an immortal life, but I think I’d forgotten that he could. I love you, I thought. He was looking at me now, and there was some kindness in it, his hair disarrayed, the sweater still bloody. Yeah, again, always, I love you.  
“I’ll take my leave now,” he said.  
I took a breath. “I have hang-ups,” I said. “I really do.”  
   
Louis gave another sigh. Long and low, more like an exhalation. But he did not, I noted, take his leave.  
“Sex-u-al issues,” I said. “Woody Allen made a career out of it.”  
He waited.  
“I could do that. Bear witness, Louis, that’s what I’m doing from now on. I will write comedy films about sex.”  
“Oh, mon dieu, no you will not,” said Louis. “You’ll start writing novels again, because you are a novelist. You may also, if you wish, write music. You cannot abandon things just because they take work.”  
Oh, _really_? “I don’t ever do that. At the studio they told me I was a workaholic, like an alcoholic but for work. Isn’t that a charming phrase?”  
   
Louis appeared to be thinking about it. “There are different kinds of work,” he said. “You do work compulsively, but there are some challenges of which you are bored or afraid.”  
This was a little too close to the truth for me. But he went on.  
“You’re developing as a writer,” he said. “And you should. Whatever I’ve said about the works, I feel there is interest in that development. And I do read, so I do have a basis for comparison.”  
I do read! I thought. That has to be the understatement of the past two centuries. But I let it drop. Teasing him now could backfire badly, I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t know that.  
   
“About sex, though,” I said. “It has to be about sex. I have to make all of my sex-u-al issues the subject of the piece.”  
“Have you read your books?” I couldn’t see Louis’ face, he’d turned away from me, his hand on his face again, but he sounded incredulous. “Have you? I know you won’t have an editor, but do you even read them yourself?”  
“You know what you are? Listen Louis, I can do a Woody Allen voice… you know what you are? You're God's answer to Job, y'know? You would have ended all argument between them. I mean, He would have pointed to you and said, y'know, ‘I do a lot of terrible things, but I can also make one of these.’ You know? And then Job would have said, "Eh. Yeah, well, you win.’"  
   
Louis raised his head. He also raised an eyebrow. My impression was note perfect, I knew. I had the hunched posture, the nervous New York-Jewish voice, even though I’d never once attempted it till just then. The vampire’s gift for mimicry is remarkable, and of course, I was an actor to begin with. Though this was dangerous ground, and I knew that too.  
“I really don’t think…” he began.  
“What do you, define, it's love!” I said,  “I love you! I, I want you in a way of cherishing your, your, your totality and your otherness, and, and in the sense of a presence, and a being, and a whole coming and a going in a room with grapefruit, and, and love of a thing of nature in a sense of not wanting or being jealous of the thing that a person possesses.”  
   
His face didn’t change. Nor did his posture. He had become very still, as if he were frozen. Then, almost imperceptibly, the ghost of his previous smile began to percolate beneath his lips. I pressed my advantage shamelessly. “Do you have any gum?” I added, switching seamlessly to being Louise Lasser, as she’d responded to Woody in that moment, in that film. _Bananas_. Timing, as they say, is everything.  
   
Because that did it. Louise Lasser’s Nancy, her awkward, insistent matter-of-factness, as expressed by me did it. He laughed. Once, in a short burst, as if it were uncontainable. He covered his mouth with his hand as if this was so, and it was a touching gesture, as if his smile was a little too vulgar. Louis, I wanted to say, I really mean it. But the pause was breathless and so I couldn’t breathe.  
   
Until, rupturing the silence, he spoke. “You're immature, Fielding,” he said into his hand.  
“How am I immature?” I whined, in Woody’s voice.  
“Well, emotionally, sexually, and intellectually.”  
“Yeah, but what other ways?”  
   
At this, he began to laugh in earnest, quietly, but very genuinely. I didn’t interrupt him, though I did probably grin. But he only laughed for a moment. “I really shouldn’t laugh,” he said. “Things are a little serious for that.”  
“But it’s so sweet when you do.”  
“I don’t even know how you can,” he said. “Spring so easily to quipping, I mean. Perhaps it’s a deficiency in me that I am unable.”  
I doubt that’s where the deficiency lies, I thought. But I pushed that thought away. His presence had changed and I wasn’t too deficient to notice. “Because I’m a fiend,” I said, still grinning. “That’s why you love me. Are you stupid?”  
   
Louis gave me a look. I’d have been chastised by it, I’d have reacted, but it was infinitely gentler than what we’d just come from, and so I let it go as I had everything else. So easy to be benevolent, with nothing to lose.    
“Clearly,” he said. “Only a very stupid person would still be here.”  
“Oh, you’re hilarious. You’re so unkind to me, you know. I don’t know why I let you live here at all.”  
“Is that really what you want, though?” he asked me. His face was unguarded, and his voice was unstructured. He sounded as if he were simply, honestly asking. He also sounded as if he wanted me to say yes. I wanted to punish him for that vulnerability. But I did not.  
   
Perhaps because by now we were very close to each other again. I think I’d moved, because it didn’t seem that he had. It also didn’t seem that he would, hovering as he was, once again between acquaintance and lover as he seemed to do so easily. But I was conscious of the fact that he’d let me do it as I meant it. Softly. Tenderly. I tried to read his face, but I couldn’t. He looked tired. He also wouldn’t look at me.  
“Please forgive me, Louis,” I said. “I don’t deserve it, but please do it anyway.”  
“It’s not a question of forgiving you,” he said. “It’s never that. It’s never been that.”  
   
Because you never have, I thought. But I pushed that thought away too. You’ve got to get rid of that, I told myself. There are shades of forgiveness, and some of them are too deep for what you’re doing here. There’s no salvaging the past, and it’s stupid to try. But pushing it down was difficult. It didn’t want to go down, and I think I found myself a little distracted by that project. I think this because I didn’t notice anything about what happened until, after a few moments, he said, “I just don’t care anymore,” he said. “I’m exhausted. This, this with you, the way you are, is exhausting.”  
   
I’m sorry about this, I am. I’ll take my own leave for a moment, because my description falters here. Because I felt it as if were real, then, and if nobody’s ever said that to you, then you’ll have to persist in not knowing how that is. Because I haven’t the strength to explain it for you, nor the skill. Suffice to say that as much as I can tell you about it now, it makes me weep from shame to transcribe it. Literally. It took me whole minutes to decide to tell you that he said that, and I almost didn’t. Maybe you can imagine it. Maybe you’d like to think about how it feels to be fundamentally exhausting. I’ll wait. It's not important to the story. When you return, I’ll tell you that back then, in that time, I stumbled a little at his words. Or perhaps I only thought I did.  
   
Either way, he’d taken my hand, I realized, so I must have done something. It seemed more deferential than romantic, but I shook it off anyway. I don’t care either, I thought. I don’t care. And you can’t make me.  
“Lestat,” Louis said. “Please don’t. Please believe me that I’m not trying to attack you.”  
Then why have you? I thought. Except I knew why, and so I couldn’t say it. I think I was about to cry, but of course I wouldn’t do that either. I suppose my silence was noticeable.    
“I do love you,” he said.  
How could he have? He couldn’t have got it from the books. There was nothing between those pages but accidents and lies. I’d be a terrible filmmaker. When it really came to it, I couldn’t make jokes about that.    
   
But I didn’t cry. I didn’t. I didn’t speak either. I didn’t even know what to think. It was always like this with him, I could say so little of what I really wanted to. If I’d started talking, that’s all I would have said, over and over again, I love you too, I love you. The words in my head, I repeated them so many times they became almost meaningless. But I didn’t speak. Louis had put a hand to my cheek, and he brushed there, looking as if he were about to say something else. But he didn’t. Instead, he dropped his hand and turned away. “I’ve got to go.”  
   
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” I shouted, and he stopped.  
“I beg your…” he started to say. But I didn’t let him finish.  I grabbed him. Go ahead and judge me for it, I don’t care. I pulled him towards me too, every bit as brusquely as I’d previously done. His body stayed firm, but he didn’t fight me this time. I put my arms around him and he let me do it.  
   
And he continued to let me do it. I took it. I knew what it meant. His pride or his rationality had told him to leave, but he didn’t want to. Or so I bade myself believe, as I nuzzled my face into his hair, and held him as tightly as I could. And I love you, I wanted to say. I love you. But he knew it, he had to. Once more he seemed to have drifted off into some solitary thought, seeming distracted even with my pushing at him. Perhaps – and indeed probably – he was sifting through options, making up his mind about me.  
   
After a while, he laid his head against my shoulder, and I knew he had passed from acceptance to preference. He’d put his arm lightly around my waist, and his hand against my chest, and it seemed very much that I had assumed correctly. He didn’t want to go anywhere at all. Though I knew him better than to assume he’d simply follow his wants. Not Louis. Having perfected mind/body duality, the Catholic church had produced Louis as a sort of living homage to itself, and he had conducted his actions in this manner for some two hundred and forty years. As if in evidence of this, his hand was moving now, seeming for all the world to evaluate me, to test my being meaningful. The body is a container for the soul, he’d be thinking, I thought. Being Louis. That was enough, however. It would do.  
“You have to have a little faith in people,” I said.  
   
“What?” he said, seeming to jolt out of his private reverie.  
“That’s Tracy,” I said. “The girl, the teenager he’s seeing. In _Manhattan_.”  
“No, it isn’t.”  
“It is,” I insisted. “It’s the last line – ‘not everybody gets corrupted, you have to have a little faith in people.’”  
“Ah, so it is,” he said. “I should have remembered. I’ve seen the movie a couple of times. I didn’t loathe it.”  
Oh mon Dieu. Louis. “What does that mean, you didn’t loathe it?”  
“It made me think of living there,” he said. ‘This is a great city, I don’t care what anybody says.’ I did like it, New York, I thought it was beautiful. Though it… the circumstances of my being there, I’m not sure I was able to appreciate it as I should have.”  
   
A thrust. Sickening. Please don’t. I wanted to say. How much do you think I am able to contain in one evening? But I felt my own rigidity and I dissembled it. I replaced it with stillness. If he was going to be in the flat, he was going to talk. And it was my own fault, of course, that when he did he spoke about this. I’d been appalling. And I should have known better than to think I would escape unscathed from my earlier forays into pure cruelty. “Oh?” I said. Tenderly. I was – I am – a little proud of myself that I managed to do that.  
   
Louis didn’t answer. He moved his hand again. I thought I understood that, perhaps. There are things, I think, that when you say them aloud, they do not translate, and that is worse than silence. The shock of it is sometimes unbearable. Bringing yourself to speak and finding yourself not understood, it’s as if you never existed. I had some sympathy for him then. Perhaps it was misplaced, I don’t know. But “tell me,” I said, anyway. Even though I wanted to say, please, expressly do not tell me anything because I cannot stand to hear it. I said “Tell me,” and I fought hard to keep the edge out of it. I’m not a total monster. I do actually love him.  
“I just wasn’t…” he said. And then he was quiet.  
   
I recognized his expression. I held my breath because of it. Whatever it is that makes my decisions, it was balanced there, between understanding his weakness, and recognizing his strength. I wanted to enclose him completely, protecting him from anything that might ever happen to dent his fragile soul. But equally, I was faintly nauseated by the lurid, bobbing undertow of things that once raised could not easily be reburied, and his right to say them, and possibly, his want. Whatever would come, I recognized, whatever he said to me, it would be bloodletting, and I was already weak. I’d have trembled if I’d let myself, but I didn’t. I stroked him. I made myself do that. His face and his hair. Gently. “You were sad,” I said. “Some terrible things had happened, and you were sad. That would put a pall over even a great city, I think.”  
   
Louis did not answer that. He was silent for minutes longer. Whole minutes, though they felt like hours. I didn’t prompt him. I didn’t challenge him. I just stood still, except for the minor movements of my fingers upon his skin. I love you, I was trying to say, but not saying it. I’ll let you. And then, finally, he said it.  
“Abstraction,” he said. “In painting. That’s chiefly what I recall about New York, besides the space itself. There’s some purity in that. Though Armand wouldn’t be persuaded.”    
And I was spared.  
   
Just look, won’t you? Look at the words. Don’t you love him a little too, for that? He’d heard me. He’d understood what I’d offered him, and he had done this instead. Armand was a reminder, a mild chastisement, and a clear recognition of and for what I’d said earlier. But the statement was a forgiveness too. A slight forgiveness. Done as only he could do it, incomplete and completely reliant upon inference. Oh, it was delicately done. I felt a surge of something like pure arousal at it. Artful. Or just perfectly artless.  
   
“In _Manhattan_ , you know,” Louis continued. “I’m not sure Allen understood that. But then perhaps he did. The film is quite scornful of mediating ‘the universe’ with art, or beauty. There’s a good deal of humor rooted in that. And yet at the same time it isn’t _really_ , since the main characters are artists. And the meaning is given in that. And of course, the film itself is an artwork. It’s resigned,” he said. “To the fact that this a tragic reality of living – an aesthetic conceptualizing, or repurposing meaninglessness. I think I would call it resigned. Hopefully, though. Perhaps even pleasurably so.”  
“And it’s, you know, funny.”  
He smiled at that. “That too. Would you like to watch _Annie Hall_?” he said. I knew what he meant. I linked my fingers with his, and he accepted it.  
   
“Do you know,” I said, “I’ve never really been?”  
“I didn’t.”  
“I mean, I’ve stopped over,” I said. “I’ve padded about a little, but I’ve never _really_ been. I’ve never done the town, as they say. I was going to go on my tour, but it didn’t work out, obviously.”  
“Would you like to go?”  
“Sure,” I said, “let’s take a trip. Let’s go to New York. I suppose I’ll never have another tour.” I myself was a little sad about that, I realized. I’d never been to Chicago, either. Or Las Vegas, which actually seemed a real shame. “Shall we go? Lets.”  
“Perhaps,” he said. “You’re not going to tour with Howard?”  
   
“They’re not a touring band,” I said, pulling him by the hand toward the sofa. “Covers bands, as a general rule, are not. Come and sit with me.”  
He did. I flopped down carelessly, but he curled his knees against his body, sideways, like a lady on a horse. It is actually a particularly Louisish gesture, that, though nobody would know it but me. Attractive, but casual, and he wouldn’t sit that way unless he were tired, and more importantly, observed by only a small audience. I recognized it for what it was - a slight, extremely graceful demonstration of intimacy. Though of course I couldn’t say anything about it. I put my hand on his foot.  
“Also, come to New York with me.”  
“I said, perhaps.”  
  
But in my mind, I was already planning it, so I took it as a confirmation regardless. I would arrange tickets that very night, and hotels, and theatre tickets. We’d go to Broadway, we’d dine on sophisticates. I would ring up my American business manager as soon as Louis and I were through here. He tended to know how to do these things in the style to which I was accustomed.  
   
Louis leaned against the arm of the sofa as I was thinking. He’d put his fingers under his chin, splayed out as if he’d arranged them on purpose.  
“You ought to go by yourself,” he said. “It’s better, perhaps. It’s a contained city, Manhattan at least. Like San Francisco. There’s no need for driving, and it’s quite possible to wander.”  
“You could wander with me.”  
“That, I think, is in some contradiction to the idea of wandering. Do you know the flâneur? It’s Baudelaire. It should be solitary.”  
“But I need you, chéri. To show me around. I’ll get lost. I’ll be helpless.”  
“Somehow I doubt that,” he said. But he smiled. Indulgently. I forgave him. His smugness, in this moment, was very much a part of his beauty.    
   
“There’s criticism of the flâneur too,” I said. “Yeah, I know about it. You’re not the only one who reads.” Or talks to college girls in bars before suckling at their tanned college throats. Whatever. “It’s outdated and sexist. Everybody knows that.”  
“There’s criticism of everything now,” Louis said. “You may ignore it. Objections, I think, much of the time, at least when they are of this nature, reflect the fact that everybody needs some kind of work to do in the face of an absence of meaning.”  
“That’s so pretentious!” I said. “You are so pretentious. I think you get away with it because you’re so quiet. You never say anything, so nobody but me knows what an unbelievable ass you are!”  
  
Louis didn’t answer. He just looked at me. I thought that subtly he might even be smirking. But he said nothing, and so I dropped the matter and continued my project.  
“You’re going to come with me to New York and learn something.”  
He was definitely smirking at that, I thought.  
   
“Think of some plays you want to see,” I said. “I’ll have them booked. Now is the opportunity to…”  
Louis interrupted. “You hadn’t got Tracy’s manner quite right, I think,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t immediately recognize it.”  
“Nonsense,” I said sharply.  
There was another one of those pauses. Then Louis said, in a camp, girl’s voice:  
“Let's fool around, it'll take your mind off it.”  
   
I collapsed. I had no time to prepare for it, nothing had given me warning. His words had been completely unexpected and the laughter burst out of me in a small explosion at the sound of them. Sharp, unstoppable, painful hysterics. And his face! Resting on his fingers, utterly deadpan as if he’d said something perfectly reasonable. I pushed his foot away and fell back against the sofa, laughing as if I might actually die of it.  
   
Louis brought the foot demurely into line with his other. He caught my gaze. It made me laugh harder and it was some time before I was able to say, “hey, how many times a night can you, how, how often can you make love in an evening?”  
Louis’ mouth twisted slightly, and his eyebrows rose. “Well, a lot,” he said, in the same voice. He could never be an actor, this was the same voice he used both for Juliet and for Portia. It was as hilarious now as it had been then, and I wondered, then remembered, when he'd ever had cause to practice.  
“Yeah! I can tell, a lot. That's, well, a lot is my favorite number,” I said, but mostly I was laughing.  
   
He smiled when I did that. Beautifully, broadly enough that I could see his fangs, which meant he’d forgotten himself. Of course he had, it was funny, and I was charmed by it. But underneath that, his expression was one of profound tenderness, and he looked at me as if I were something precious, something delicate. That frightened me, knocked the laughter back a little, in a way that I realized was stupid. Why shouldn’t he look at me like that, if he loved me? And why shouldn’t he love me? It shouldn’t be frightening. And yet I didn’t want to look at him while he did it. It didn’t make any more sense than anything else had. I’d closed my eyes and put my hand over my face, which probably looked like part of the laugher, and it was. But not totally.  
   
I wonder now if he knew this. I didn’t think of it at the time, I was too caught up in what was happening. But then, Louis uncurled himself. I felt him move over me, and when I opened my eyes, I saw he was propped up on my chest, his hands under his chin again, but folded now. Looking down at me as he was, the situation struck me as more than a little absurd, and I laughed at that too. Louis was still smiling. “Let's fool around,” he said, and for all his theatrical incompetence, he was really selling her, Tracy. “Let's do it some strange way that you've always wanted to, but nobody would do with you.”  
   
I felt something at this. A hot rush of blood to my skin. A blush? Impossible. But something like it. His hipbones were pressed into me and it hurt a little, though not terribly, and I wanted very much to put my hand on his ass. I didn’t. Louis had followed my face with his as I turned away. He kissed me a little, on my mouth.  
“Oh chéri,” I said, still laughing. “You don’t really mean it.”  
But Louis looked serious now. Not harshly serious, just inadvertently serious, as if he couldn’t help it. He seemed to force himself into a half-smile. “But I do,” he said softly, not in a girl’s voice.  
   
“But I’m…” I said, momentarily stalled. What was I, indeed?  
“Perhaps we fight in order to talk?” he said. “Perhaps that’s the only way we know how.”  
“I’m so sorry, Louis,” I said. “I know I’m a terrible creature. But I’m all messed up, and you have to forgive me.”  
“My heart bleeds,” he said, dryly. Yet still, he was looking at me as he had been. His expression! I struggled not to laugh right in his face.  
   
I didn’t. Somehow we’d kissed each other and that stalled it. I kissed him, I think, maybe on purpose, so I wouldn’t laugh. Soft and limitless, and I’d put my arms around him. His waist was strikingly containable, and I felt that sharply. Even in his coat, even if I could feel every layer of fabric.  I could feel my own laughter too, but it was contained by these pressures, just. His tender mouth. So firm, but so unbelievably pliable. We went at that for a little while, I think. I’m quite fond of kissing, generally.  
   
But all moments break eventually, and this one did too. I was stunned, somewhat. I’d forgotten it could. Or that it had been happening at all, that there was anything to break. Louis laid his face against mine and breathed deeply, in and out and I could feel it on my skin. Overwhelming. Warm too. Back to consciousness. I wanted to say something, something profound, to tell him just how much I loved him, but I glimpsed his face again – pure adoration - and laughter was the only thing that would come out. Just a short burst, a giggle, really, but he jerked away from me.  
   
I felt bad. “Louis,” I said, or started to say, trying to remain composed before the seriousness of his face broke whatever reservations I had left. I tried! I really did! I looked at him and said his name, and don’t laugh! I told myself. But I may as well have told myself to stop breathing. It didn’t work. I began to laugh again in total earnest. I knew he’d be offended, I knew he was probably already furious, but I simply couldn’t stop. It was a physical impossibility. I shoved my hand into my mouth but it helped nothing.  
   
Louis rolled his eyes. He was sitting over me on his haunches now, but he leaned back and for a split second I thought he was going to clamber off me. Erotic as hell. Such smoldering fury. Oh God, but you’re beautiful, I wanted to say to him, but there was only laughter. I wanted so badly to stuff it back into my mouth. I didn’t even know what was driving it now. It seemed to be coming of its own accord. Louis just watched me do it, his firm ass pressing unconsciously into my thighs. He was faintly incredulous, possibly even – I hoped – slightly amused, but he was entirely engaged. His gaze, in fact, was so targeted that it began to make me feel a little odd.  
“But what are you…?”  
   
He moved suddenly. It took me by surprise. Perhaps thinking he could stuff it into my mouth, he brusquely lifted my shirt up and rolled it over my head. He held it there, over my hands. That was shocking too. “What are you doing?” I demanded, half laughing, and half stunned, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he ran his unoccupied hand along my arm, and over my chest. Then he brought it up to my face. “That’s enough,” he said, holding my chin with startling firmness. “Afford the occasion the solemnity it deserves.”  
   
I think my laughter stopped completely when he said this. Only for a second though, because then I remembered. Really. He’d really done that. He’d really said it. And it was Louis – Louis! - and that made it ridiculous and the laughter was worse than before. I thought I’d combust. His glower solidified. Hard. Incendiary. And he moved towards me again.  
   
He made a bite at my throat. It was almost too sudden for me to react to it. There was little to react to, however. It was the merest nip. It was more ticklish than painful. He drank a little out of it, really just the tiniest bit, and then he stopped. He leaned back again, so I could see him, his mouth wet and red, his cheeks already flushed.  
“Stop laughing,” he said.  
   
I couldn’t. It seemed to infuriate him, though it was hard to tell how serious he was about it. He’d moved his other hand, the hand that wasn’t holding mine, over my back, and then he was awkwardly pawing at my ass as if he couldn’t decide whether to injure or arouse me, and it seemed so sweet, this awkward frustration, confused and adorable and even more hilarious. As I arched my back towards him, still giggling like an idiot, I felt his smooth hand in the small of it.  He’d pulled away, but he was pulling me with him, and the whole thing was quite uncoordinated, I realized. He didn’t seem to know how to do it at all. I laughed, but I decided to assist him.  
   
Well, I tried. I tried to kiss him, but he had my hands all wrapped up in my shirt and my body at an odd angle against the sofa and I couldn’t reach.  
“Do that again,” I said, “the biting, Louis.”  
   
He looked at me without saying anything. My hands were in the shirt unable to move, and his free hand was lightly resting between my skin and the back of my pants. Aside from the slight brush of his fingers, he didn’t move at all.  It began to seem as if he would, soon, very soon, but he didn’t. He did smile, however. Slowly. Evenly. Almost, I thought, maliciously. But that was stupid. Frustrating! And he wouldn’t speak. He must not have known that I couldn’t get out, thinking that I kept my hands there on purpose.  
   
“Louis,” I said. The laughter was subsiding, and I was surprised to hear a pleading tone creep into my voice. “Do it again.”  
Louis moved his hand up the side of my neck, and it felt as if it were sympathetic. His face was so close. But I still couldn’t reach him. And I was trying. I tried to struggle out of his grasp and eventually broke a hand free. He noticed this, and he grabbed it.  
   
“Louis!” I was actually pleading now. And why did I sound so desperate? I was angry, for God’s sake. Angry with him for restraining me like this when I wanted to get at him. I started to struggle in genuine earnest.  
 “Please,” I whined, “Louis, please.”  
   
No response. Just his even smile and his stillness and the hands. And then a shock. Sharp and exquisite, but again, very shallow and very brief. Another little nip, on my chest this time. Another delicate suck, and then, as if a polite dinner guest, he licked the wound clean, licked it until it closed. Then he kissed me there, and laid his face there, and closed his eyes.  
   
The contradiction was heartbreaking and aggravating, and a violent, vibrating frustration washed over me as it happened. His breath on my skin was magnified to the point that it felt like actual electricity, and those two small punctures throbbed, even though they had closed. Louis was drawing his finger in a circle around the place he’d just bitten, his eyes open again, his expression awestruck, but his grip on my hands in the shirt was no less firm than it had been. And I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move!  
  
He bit me again. And again. At some point I had ceased to discern his kisses from his actual breaches in my skin, because when he bit my left nipple, I couldn’t tell if he had actually bitten it, or was simply teasing at it with his mouth. Each time he closed his feeding, he moved a little to the side and began again. He was drinking from me so softly that at first I didn’t register that he was taking blood out of my body, which of course sounds stupid to say because obviously he was, but they were such light and tender extractions that it wasn’t until I began to feel that soft pulse in my stomach, that feeling of rushing absence, that I’d understood how much he’d been drinking. The quietness of his lips and the gentle, gentle movements of his fingers had covered over that, and I’d felt so much at my skin that I’d been absolutely lost.  
  
Remember, though! Remember you’re here! I came to and jerked my hands against his grasp. He still had them. And my moving made him lean up, and his face was firm enough that it stopped my movements totally. What are you doing, I thought, once more, somewhere between fear and fascination. I’d stopped struggling. Too spellbound. When I realized, I was furious, and fuck you! I’ll show you fucking! I thought, beginning to fight him off again. But it achieved nothing. Because Louis growled – he growled! Oh God! – and he grasped my hands more forcefully, and he opened my chest again.   
   
I broke to pieces at it. So much terror at that sound, so much abandon. It hurt and felt wonderful, of course it did. But that isn’t why. It was more than that, so, so much more than the way it felt. It was the understanding that bolted through my body at that action. Liquid and hot, forcing my blood against the surface of my skin, the absolute knowledge that he had thought about this before doing it. With the viciousness of that penetration came a vibrant image of Louis, alone with his thoughts, alone in his sleep or some other place where he might have lain independent, with his hand on his own body, imagining the specifics of fucking me. He’d thought about me when I wasn’t there. Or perhaps when I was. Perhaps he’d even imagined it in this room, tonight. He wasn’t just favoring me at all. He _wanted to_.  
   
Oh God, I’m in love with you, I thought. I gasped. I don’t doubt it translated. I love you, I love you, I love you. I wanted to bite him in return, so much, so much so that I sucked reflexively at my own torn lip, not quite realizing that I had bitten it again. But I was quivering, paralyzed, ineffectual, and how glorious that was. I think I actually cried out when he reached my wrist, puncturing it languidly, sinking his teeth into a thick vein. So uncontrolled, to cry out. And how easily my skin had broken for him, it wanted him as much as I did. And he hadn’t stopped there. I smelt my own blood spilling down my arm. I think I was dying. Perhaps of my own volition, perhaps of his, I didn’t know.  
   
His lips closed lightly on my palm now, but he didn’t bite – this time I knew that. I could feel his breathing there, and his tongue, and the smeared wetness of my own life, but no puncture. No penetration. He waited. And waited. Forever, he was waiting forever. Bastard! I wanted to say, but there were no real words, only impulse. Bastard, don’t do this to me! Body perfect in its soft cashmere, his black wool coat warm and comforting, and his hair was loose and I buried my face in it, thinking forever I’ll be here, and you can’t do this, you monster, it’s unconscionable. I’ll weep, I’m dying. I would burn relentlessly, forever, and he would never release me. Tangled my fingers in it. Hair just like silk. And the next moment, I noticed that both of my hands were free, as if he had forgotten about them. Yet I couldn’t move either of them, not really, except to wrap myself lightly around him, not even to press into him.  
   
But he started to take off his coat, and then his sweater, or perhaps I did, since both of our hands were involved in the process, and they went away, and his shirt underneath was beautifully chosen, a crisp cotton, a pale, creamy Parisian green. I started to climb over him, to investigate, because it seemed that every part of his had a different smell, a different manner of embracing the shirt, and I hadn’t known that, because only my hand had been under it before, or rather, under his undershirt, which I was tearing at now. Somewhere amongst all of that we were kissing each other, such a tangle of closeness, though, who knows where and when. God, his mouth. Really. Kissing, just like humans do. But it’s wonderful. Hundreds of years, and I’d never gotten over that. I’d bitten his lips a little, but not enough. Not enough! Sparks of his actual existence, burning my throat, but only a cruel appetizer.    
   
I don’t know what my hands were doing. He’d taken them out of the equation for so long that they felt clumsy now, ripping at him, tugging and pulling at the shirt. I was trying to get at what was under there, his beautiful chest, his lovely bones, his little trails of dark hair on white skin. I wanted to put my mouth on it, I remember that sensation. To drink, of course, but also just to taste it, to lick and to suckle and to stroke it. His skin was impossibly smooth, his nipples ever so slightly pink. Nothing about him had changed, only now I was entitled to savor it, putting my nose against him like an animal, pawing at him with my useless hands. Moments later I realized I’d ripped the shirt, and the undershirt, quite to ribbons. But it was no matter. They were only things.  
   
How long had I been struck by him? How long? Had I stopped moving, had I let him move? Because he had moved, but I only knew it when he began to bite at me once more, above my hip. For a moment I was held totally in thrall by it, my hands frozen disorientingly on his back. I probably made some terrible noises at that. I know I did. I must have sounded appalling. But then, I just didn’t care about it, because I just couldn’t wait any more. When his teeth sank into me like that, I had to have his blood in my mouth right then, right at that moment. And I pulled him off me, and I threw him back against the sofa, and I ripped into his flesh.  
   
I bit him between his neck and his shoulder. His skin gave beautifully. I punctured him as if he were a firm fruit, penetrated him both with my teeth and with my nails. He bled and bled and he gasped from it and I licked all of the blood up, every drop, catching it where it spilled over his stomach and stained the waistband of his trousers, unthinkingly pushing him off of the sofa in my unflinching gluttony. He hit the ground quite hard – I doubt I apologized- and I went after him. I straddled him and this time I was the one holding his hands back. I did it to hurt him. His back arched, and I knew I was bending him painfully. I wanted to. I wanted to make him bleed to the point of death. Hurt him badly. God, he was beautiful. My blood was all over his face, and his was filling me. It forced me on. An exceptional madness. The look on his face was exceptional. Not fear. So, so much better.    
   
I held him like this until he shifted. It caught me by surprise, that he lifted his hand under mine, putting one of my fingers in his mouth. He was too perfect for that, too cultured. A savage little pain when he bit it, but I felt that less than I did the implicit challenge to my illusions. The dirty fiend. Where did he learn that? That was a man’s trick, a trick for doing on a man. It made me jealous and I tore my hand away and bit him viciously at his throat again. Ruthlessly. I heard him cry out when I did it too. Almost a scream. Could feel his body tense up between my thighs, shifting itself toward the wound as if protectively. I relished that, the vestigial terror in his body. And it was glorious, how mortal it seemed. But this was only for a second. He had tensed enough, and hurtfully enough that I pulled myself away. It was too much, I’d break him. Only games, remember. And he’s fragile.    
   
But how wrong I was about that. He wouldn’t let me. Louis shoved his hand against my face, smearing the blood there, grabbing my hair, jerking me towards him. “Don’t please,” he said. “You can’t stop now, god.” He said it with such sobbing helplessness that for a second I could only stare at him. Squeezed between my legs as he was, his eyes wide with trust and compulsion –my heart had broken, it had filled every part of me, forcing itself into my mouth. How precious, how beautiful I found his abandon. I bit him again, on his caught wrist, but my gasps weren’t from this. They were from him. My bloodstained virgin. The taste of him now, here, was infinitely, supernaturally more exquisite than any other time I had had it, and I knew why. Utter ecstasy, the recognition of this moral collapse. I couldn’t tell if he bit me again too, or if it was his fingers pressing into me. I was drinking from him, and it was really him, and he’d really, honestly let me, and I had no idea what was happening. I might as well have been blind.  
   
But his hands were in my hair still, and he’d pulled me closer, and his mouth was at my lips and then at my ear while I guzzled at his wrist. He whispered to me, I think. I think I remember that. Sweet words, meaning nothing except that he had to talk. Because he was Louis and that was what he did, conceptualize, perform analysis even of this. Tell me that he loved me, when I hadn’t asked for it and I didn’t care. Though I did. I did care. I cared so much and it was so important that he’d done it. That he’d tell me this, because for one second I could actually believe it. I didn’t remember taking off my pants, actually they were only half off, but he had forced some fingers up inside of me. Abruptly, and perfectly, and even in my total occupation, it struck me that I had let him do this. Such a personal thing. Could I touch him like that too? I wanted to.  
   
I shoved my hand into his pants. Such lovely wool, such pleasure to unbutton and unzip, even one handed. Then my hand was gripping his naked thigh, digging into it. Louis tensed when I broke the skin. He made noises. They were the sweetest noises I had ever heard, a patter of breathless cries, a mewling, joyful powerlessness. I bit his neck again, tearing at it, and he opened the inside of my upper arm with what seemed like total starvation. He was sucking from me and moaning. I probably was too. I was. I was gorging on him, full to bursting, I couldn’t manage my sounds or my decorum. I was horrible, I was monstrous. I luxuriated in it. I pushed into it. Glorious. Absolutely glorious. But it wasn’t enough. Perhaps it would never be enough. I was going to die drinking from him before I was satisfied. My fingers were deep into his thigh now. It would be a real wound now, harsh and painful and real and the violence of that thrilled me and frightened me too.  
   
But it was too strong. It was too much. A blotting sensation came through me at doing that violence, like a jolt. It had begun to feel as if I really would, as if I were really dying. It came first in little waves, in tiny shocks, imperceptible and then it was gradually building. Death, I thought, oh death. Blanking me over, pulling me out as if I myself were a total and yawning abyss. But no death is like this one. Nothing so paltry as death could explain this feeling. Yet I was dying, absolutely, and the only thing that would keep me living was him, and I sucked at him, my feasting becoming grotesque. I had lost the ability to discern whether my blood was leaving me, or entering. He gave a sharp, shuddering gasp, and I tasted it. Not just the blood, but something essential. It was mine, and he was dying, and it had always been mine. I felt such tenderness, and such cruelty. I wouldn’t stop. Die, my love, I was telling him. Die in my arms, and I’ll die in yours too, my death is yours, it belongs to you. This is my rightful power, I thought, giving over. It was my last thought. Before I killed him, and before, almost simultaneously, I ceased to exist.  
   
Was it simultaneous though? I’m not actually sure. His fingers were in my hair, pulling at it, his gasps receding, his miraculous sounds becoming quieter, but that seems too perfect, even for us. It must have been more mundane even than it felt at the time. It was a shock, a tearing sensation, and a blackness, every molecule in my body strained against the surface of it. And then it was over too quickly, and the feeling ebbed too quickly and I felt bereft from it, as if it had never happened at all. Louis’ hair was wet with blood, though some of that was probably from sweat, and he seemed spoiled now, his beauty tarnished by the messiness and the banal intimacy of this. I put my arms all the way around him, over the scent of sick, drying blood as if to protect him from that sorrow. It seemed miraculous too that I could still do this.  
   
Louis moved against me. He wrapped his arms around my waist with some force, burying his face in my chest. He gripped my naked back, and it shocked me, how hard that was. So he was still living. And it was still him. He looked up into my face then, and I knew it absolutely. And whe He kissed me. Long and hard and quite brutally, and it took me some moments to respond, but when I did that same feeling began to course through me once again, pulsing in time with the beat of my heart. It was pleasant for a moment, more than pleasant. And then it was uncomfortably overwhelming now that I wasn’t distracted. It throbbed. But he hadn’t been spoiled. You’re so stupid, Lestat. You’re just always so fucking stupid.  I’d just been afraid.  
  
“Holy shit, Louis,” I said. “Holy fucking shit.”  
He smiled, panting, but he’d curled up against me, closing his eyes. “Vulgarity,” he said. “So unnecessary.”     
“What the fuck?” I asked him. “Who are you?”  
“Hum…” he said, as if had to think about it. But he didn’t answer, and moments later I noticed that he was napping. I started to laugh again. Uproariously, and verging on actual hysteria. But it didn’t wake him.  
   
It took me forever to stop laughing. I tangled my fingers in his hair. I hadn’t meant to, I’d meant to stroke or something else tender, but he was matted with blood and my fingers were stuck there. That was hilarious too. And how long could we stay there like this, semi-naked on the floor of the sitting room? Perhaps eternally, or at least until dawn, I thought. I wasn’t sure I minded. I wanted to, actually, as my body still recognized, and relished, his closeness. But the dog would come in, he couldn’t sleep all the time. Or something would happen. The phone would ring, another oilrig would explode, nothing is eternal. And that’s funny. Eternal nothingness.  
   
But I forget memory. There’s something eternal in that. My memories of human sex seemed so paltry by comparison, then, but they return to me now. And the times I’d given him my blood, that’s there too, and it must have colored my understanding. Still, then, everything about it seemed different and wholly, utterly new. It was new in form, and especially function, and I don’t know the question, I thought, but sex is definitely the answer. God, how many Woody Allen movies had I actually seen? I didn’t remember, didn’t even remember where I’d found that quotation or why I’d remembered it, and I wanted to talk about that with Louis, Louis whom I had generously let sleep against me for perhaps twenty minutes. Boredom had set in.  
   
So I shook him. “Hey you,” I said. “Wake up, I want to talk to you.”  
I did. And I wanted to play some more music. But I wanted to do it with him next to me. To serenade him. To play with one arm around his waist. I wanted to go for a walk – a run – but with him beside me holding my hand. Drive to the island. Something. I had to burn some of this energy. I needed an adventure. But first I needed him to wake up. “Louis?”  
Louis opened his eyes. “What? Ah. Yes.”  
“Louis,” I said, pushing him off me, “it’s not fair to sleep. You sleep late anyway.”  
   
He started to laugh. He sat up, and looked towards me, his hand over his mouth again as if to contain himself. But he failed at this, just as surely as I had done earlier. His laughter was low, and gentlemanly, but I knew it for what it was. For him, this was uncontrollable. I gazed at him as if he were my brand new property. What an adorable sight.  
“You are…” he managed to say.  
“I’m what, huh? What are you going to say about me now?”  
“That you are wonderful,” he said. “Because you are.”  
I beamed at that.  
   
“So get up,” I said. “We’re going out.”  
“You don’t want to watch _Annie Hall_?”  
“No, I need to do something. Drive somewhere. Can we drive somewhere?”  
“We can do anything you’d like,” he said. “But let me… well, perhaps wash and dress. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If I were presentable.”  
“My clothes won’t fit you,” I said, from my reclining position, throwing my arm over his legs. “You’re skinny. But I’ll let you use my shower, I suppose.”  
He smiled. “How gracious of you,” he said. “You’re a gentleman.”  
“It’s a class prerogative that I may be so at times of my own choosing,” I said, haughtily. “I reserve it for important things. When they matter.”  
“As, for example, your shower.”  
“Shut up, Louis,” I said. “You’re lucky I’m letting you do it at all.”  
   
So we showered. That was the first time, ever in this flat, that we’d done that. I’d tell you about it, but I don’t want to. Some things are mine and mine alone. Memories, you know, as I’ve said, are eternal. Sometimes they’re stronger if you never say them. Though I will tell you that dry, he let me dress him. He’ll never let me do that. But now he did and his movements were slow and languid and trusting. And he didn’t say anything so I started to worry, but when I did he put his finger to my lips. “I’m just quiet,” he said. Fondly, apologetically, serenely overwhelmed.  
   
So we showered, and then everything was perfect. The smell of jasmine in the air, through the windows, because the whole South has that, and it is always nostalgic. And the flushed look on his face, and his tender, religious touches. I put the radio on. Something good was playing, though I didn’t know what it was. Remember it, I told myself, look it up later. That’s your song. That’s the song for this special night. I’d put Louis in a tie, and as I was tying it, I began to sing along. This made him smile, broadly, and of course I couldn’t help but put my arms around him and dance him around a little. Merciful death, I told myself, it’s only sex, and rather banal sex at that, hardly adventurous. But then I would look at him, and see that smile, and that blush, and that blaze in his eyes and know that I had put them there, and I was full up in a way that I could barely stand. I brushed the shoulders of his suit – my suit, it didn’t fit that badly - and kissed him on the cheek as if to seal his perfection in.  
   
In short repair, we left the flat, impeccably dressed. I couldn’t believe that the world was still here. The streets were quiet, covered snugly with a low mist, only a few revelers left in the Dauphin quarter, and nobody in the square. Though it had a bountiful feeling to it, a feeling of promise. I was full up on Louis, I assumed. Perhaps illusionarily, but I had no desire to feed, and the faint sounds of wind in the trees and of far away cars reminded me of a wider existence, of all of creation, in a way that made me wish to treat it benevolently. Mobile was a bijou New Orleans, restrained, befitting my newfound maturity. I was, I thought, or I could be, actually happy here. I leaned over the roof of the Porsche to tell him this. He stood against the passenger door, gazing off into the distance. The look on his face gave me a sudden rush of both fear and startling, unmediated honesty.  
   
“Louis?” I asked him. He turned to me, surprised, I thought. “You know it takes practice?”  
He blushed. It was not his usual blush. It was not accompanied by disapproval, nor anger. Instead, it was a sweet, hot reminder of what had just been, and I savored it.  He bent his head. “That’s fine. I’m amenable to that.”  
I grinned. “Oh?”  
Louis gave me a look. Don’t push it, it said. Limitless potential. Remarkable beauty.  
So I didn’t. “Where shall we go?” I said. “Have we got time to drive to the Island?”  
   
Louis looked at his pocket watch as I unlocked the car. How ridiculous and adorable that he still had a pocket watch. And one that I’d given him. He’d had to have had it specially repaired.  
“Probably not,” he said. His blush had faded almost as quickly as it had come. Though I remembered it. “Sorry about that, Ponce de Leon. I’d like to drive through the mist, though. Perhaps you’ll take me over the bridge.”  
“But of course,” I said. He slipped into his seat, and fastidiously clipped his seatbelt. After a moment, I did too. It was late, but it didn’t do to be pulled over.  
I saw him flicking though the pile of compact discs in the central compartment. “I’d also like to pick up some things from my place,” he said. “What would you like to listen to?”  
   
“You pick, mon cher,” I said, checking my mirrors like a conscientious driver, and he put something in the changer. I didn’t see what it was, I was too busy watching him in the mirror. He noticed me looking and smiled again.  
“Stop it,” he said, laughing slightly. Laughing at me. “I’m not going anywhere. I only need some clothes. You ripped up my shirt.”  
   
I answered him by turning the ignition and raising an eyebrow at him as if I’d never done any such a thing.  
He looked right back at me, unwavering, not missing a single beat.  
“Love is the answer,” he said, in a New York accent, the nasal quaver remarkably accurate, “but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.”  
   
How very, very right he was. I loved him then. More than I ever had. As I drove him across the bay bridge, through the humid mist that always smothers this town, past stretches of blackness and periodic spotlights of passing cars, I put out my hand to brush his hair behind his ears, and felt something I wish I never had. How safe, and poetic and beautiful it was, his teasing me, his familiar face, his trust. Yet only the next night, less than twenty-four hours from now, the space between us would slip open, and questions would tumble out of it like spilled viscera. Something unraveling. Already undone.


	8. The Least Valley of Sackcloth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestat makes bad decisions, for a change. Meet his guitarist!

The least valley of sackcloth 

The first time I drove Louis to Gulfport, we made it in the dirt. Okay, sand. Estuary sand – silt, really. But allow me a little poetic license here. It was poetic enough, anyway. I’d driven him there to make up for that night I was telling you about, chapters and chapters ago, so long ago that it must feel like distant memory to you now. I’ll recap. After a week of sexual degeneracy, I’d hurt him intentionally and been unable to apologize. So I touched him up in the shower, and I drove him to Gulfport. He wanted to see if we could see the slick, and that was the only reason he gave.

But I was In Trouble that night, so I was inclined to be generous without questions. If that’s what you want, darling, I’d probably have said, then of course I shall move the earth itself for you. Just let me beat you up a little and you can have anything. And I had. Moved the earth I mean, or at least driven a car over it.

Though of course, naturally, the Deepwater Horizon disaster would have been better observed from New Orleans, or at least from down near the delta. What a cruel joke that was. Had either of us been able to bring ourselves to go back to that city, we might have gone there instead. But we couldn’t – of course we couldn’t. This thing was too fragile now, and those past experiences had chafed in my memory and his as well, I don’t doubt. So we maintained the present through the physical, and Gulfport would remain relevant for exactly that. But that was the first time, that night. 

I don’t know that either of us had had that intention either. I like to imagine that we didn’t, that everything that happened in Gulfport was blameless and circumstantial. Perhaps it was – the props were there, the Porsche glistening black against the night and the imagined oil, the beach we found deserted and the haze of the city muted. The stage was made. Nothing to see there, so we’d fucked in the dirt. I imagined I saw oil in it, because he’d talked so much about it in the car as I drove there, but it was yet to arrive. In nights, we’d see it for real on the Alabama coastline, and on the front page of the _Press-Register_.

But in Gulfport, Louis had looked up at me with the flush of a murder and a week’s worth of frantic fucking still in his face, and his eyes were wide like a much younger man’s. How innocent he’d seemed then, how human, and “we’ll be here for all of this,” he’d said to me, and I’d looked at him for clarification. “Industry,” he’d told me. “It’s done without thought, and it runs to chaos. It is running to chaos. And we’ll be here for all of it. Doesn’t that terrify you?”

It was different then. These words and this moment, they came before I was sick of that crap, before the mere mention of any disaster, or the British Petroleum LLC (or Royal Dutch Shell, for variation) would make me fling something at him or storm out of the room. And it was just after I’d wronged him, and while we were still in the first throes of whatever that was. It wasn’t even that I was inclined to goodness. It had just happened. I suppose he let me.

In fact, I know he did. His heartbroken face had broken mine and I’d put my arms around him as a kind of comfort, and we’d done it. Tenderly, and miraculously and both with and without urgency. Stars all around us. Nobody for miles. Poetic license, indeed. I don’t even need it.

Well. Nobody but you, my dear, whom I don’t doubt I registered somewhere. I learned at only twenty-one that only the wicked and foolish really believe that they are truly unobserved. That’s the importance of confession, perhaps. God needs to hear you _admit_ your sins, as he already knows they have been committed. Admit what you are, He tells you, and the punishment will be a little less severe. And perhaps that’s true for us too. Yes, we made it in Gulfport, that first time. It was a mutual decision, a romantic action. Am I forgiven now? Like Dylan Thomas’ Nogood Boyo, I want to be good. I do. Only in other times, in other places, nobody would let me. 

Oh, I’m not the greatest fan of Thomas – a little tragic for my tastes, however quoteable his better known poems may be, and however much literary kinship we may share in this very special moment of alcohol soaked profundity – but with that line in _Under Milk Wood_

NOGOOD BOYO: I want to be Good Boyo, but nobody will let me!

 

I feel a great deal of personal relation. I am who I am written to be, and the circumstances of my life and personality unfortunately demand that I am, as I always am, up to no good in the wash-house.

No wash-board, however. A week after I met Delford, he fixed the tuning of my electric guitar. I hadn’t known it was broken, but fret separations are so often produced at minutely uneven heights, he said. For perfect accuracy right up to the body of the instrument it’s best to sand or file them until they are even, but that’s difficult and much too imprecise for a private citizen to do at home. What he said he could do was move the individual string holsters in the saddle in order to compensate for the discrepancies there, and he did it. He did it with the knife on his key-chain, it took him less than an hour, and the guitar really was better after he’d finished with it. Given that reflection, I do feel a little bad about tonight.

Not much, though. To be scrupulously fair to myself, I think I was genuinely excited by it at first. He was so sweet, and so pliant, and there was that wonderful moment of feeling him grow hard against me, and the delicious power in wondering if he’d noticed that I hadn’t (I doubt it. He was well under my control by then). But when I did actually bite him and sate myself on his blood, I will admit that I’d already begun to contemplate what I’d do afterwards while he slept. Or possibly died.

Oh please. Vampire, remember? Did you forget about that? I suppose you could have, since the last times we’ve spent together, I’ve downplayed it to comfort you. Sex and psychology, just as you might have, just as if we might possibly share some of the same experiences, or be relatable to each other. Huh! Well, I trust you know how foolish that is now. That isn’t the truth, and it never was. My tender young guitarist is nothing more a mobile food source to me, and that’s all you would be too, were you to step out from behind the veil of readership and into my actual presence. All of your power comes from your distance, you know. Don’t be too proud of it.

Know too that without that you may as well be one of Louis’ rats, coming willingly into my lair as Delford did, soft and small and fleshy, and already starting to die. He hadn’t shaved, and his beard grows quickly, and he smelled of mortality and Wild Turkey, and I’m high on it right now. Oh, I’m enjoying that, cresting a smooth Southern drunk, liquor and violence burning my veins. When he slumped against the sofa, I stood up, wiped my mouth and put on _Slippery When Wet_ , which I will tell you for posterity’s sake that I outsold. Because if I’m going to be drunk, my love, then I am going to revel in it, and Bon Jovi has always tended to underscore my convictions rather than shake them. I was more famous than they were once, and that’s all I care about now. That memory. It blots this one.  

You’re not even really appalled, I know that. You know the score by now, and you like it. And the fact that you like it is making it happen, and you like that too, don’t you recognize that? Your power? I told you not to be proud of it, but you’ll still recognize it. It’s transformative, you’ve anchored me here. Stop looking at me for an instant, and I’ll die as I should have done. Nothing important, deep with the first dead, as the line goes. But you insisted I was somebody special. You wouldn’t let me go gently.

Do you see what I mean? That’s what I wanted. What I’ve always wanted. Perfect goodness. It’s you who won’t let me, watching from outside my window, stalking me in the snow, sending me letters, and calling me names. Wolfkiller Lestat, James Bond of Vampires. I love you, I want you. Well, it’s your fault. All of it.

In short, I’m not going to beg for your forgiveness anymore. We’ve reached the point where I may reasonably make demands of you. If you’d never read my books, if you’d never listened to my records, I might have learned to be humble, to consider my actions. I might have found “inner peace” or Nirvana or whatever they call it now. I might have gradually become someone better, and not be cancelling tonight’s scheduled chapter for another less taxing one, which is basically an email that I am not writing.

As you see, there is one danger in alcohol that I’d forgotten. I think you call it the “drunk dial” now, and I could already be read as having succumbed to it once tonight, although personally I believe the true interpretation is a little more intentional. At any rate, God help us all, I finally answered the backlog of messages on my Blackwood ‘phone and doing that on the back of doing my guitarist makes me feel as if I’ve used up all of my interpersonal angst for one evening. That’s your fault too, my assembled absent admirers. Yours personally. If you were going to ignore me, you should have warned me years ago, and I wouldn’t have had to ring up ex-lovers and take an extraordinarily callous pleasure in reminding them that they were ex.

It’s too late for that, however. You’ve already promised. So listen, you’re going to be in love with me anyway, because you owe me. You’re going to feel it if I have to glamour it into you as I did Delford. You’re going to feel it even if it makes you cry as Quinn did, on my messages, and then in the present, his choked up, still young-sounding whisper on the ‘phone. Even if it ruins your life as Louis claims it did his, because he blames me for everything, regardless of whether or not it is my fault. Even if – perhaps worse still – you read all of that and know what I’ve been doing. Know I crawled back to him as my dog crawls under the bed when he’s sick, to die or recover, and that these awkward events bid both awkward reflections, and awkward times. But you owe me your love regardless. This is all for your benefit, you know.

It was cruel, I know, telephoning Quinn out of the blue, not having said a word for months, and coming on breezy as if there were nothing to it, but I did it _because_ it was cruel, let’s be clear about that. Both his constancy, and the absolute knowledge of my petty, personal and wholly deliberate evil were comforting, and I wanted them, and I could drive back there right now, and he’d still take me in, just as you’re taking me in now with your gaze. I’d put my teeth in his throat, and he’d want me to. Like the fan letters say. Circumstances make me no good against my will, it’s the price of expectation. Quinn will adore me without question, and that is his fault, because I tried to resist it, I honestly did. I fought. I threw up in my own mouth, don’t you remember? I tried to resist you. I tried to do things that weren’t bad.

So how else shall I prove it to you? I’ve got to keep telling you this, I’ve got to hurt him like that, because that is what he wants me to do, because that is how I am written, how I have written myself. I mean that metaphor to be wholly reflexive, you’ll understand. I write my own destiny, and I am the only one who does it. But if you won’t consume it, if he won’t recognize it, then it’s as if it never was. Hell is other people, as the saying goes. Other people and their expectations. I mean it’s not _literally_ , and I do know that personally. But it may as well be.

I suppose I can give the same explanation for Delford, though in this case the pain is beautifully literal. Delford, at just twenty-two, is already older than I will ever be. It was almost an accident, taking him with me back to the flat tonight so he could pick up his fucking mandolin and play me an album. _The Lioness_ , Songs : Ohia, “before they were the Magnolia Electric Company,” apparently. He’d been drinking in the car and was drunk by the time we arrived. When he connected his personalized electronic player to the stereo he stumbled a little, resting his hand on my vinyl. He didn’t break anything, however, so I didn’t comment. I just listened to the album, because fine, I don’t know about these things because my tastes are too mainstream, as he keeps telling me, taunting me, in that utterly stupid, utterly erotic cocksure manner that every young man in a band is supposed to have. And it aggravated me and excited me and I reacted.

Or it would have done. That’s not the total truth. In reality, I couldn’t be bothered to play to it tonight. What I would have done is listen to what Delford was telling me about the album, facts and trivia that I was supposed to argue against, because that’s what Francis Durand, Frankie to his bandmates, does for kicks. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have saved Bon Jovi for afterwards, I would have introduced it then, and with enthusiasm. Fuck your Jason Molina, embrace the crafted superiority of John Francis (no relation) Bongiovi, Jr. and Desmond Child!

But then I was momentarily absorbed by the unfortunate lyrical poignancy of the title track, want my heart to break, if it must break, in your jaws. Want you to lick my blood off your paws, something like that, and my thoughts upon hearing those words in my disastrous condition must be obvious to you, and my persona was slipping. I think I spoke to him as if I were really myself, because “you’re on some other planet, man,” was some of what he was said in response, and “I love you,” and somehow, somewhere, “you really think I could be somebody?” And the rest is admittedly awkward, but honestly wholly predictable decision making.

Oh, you’d have done it too, don’t pretend you wouldn’t. I am in a state between states, and he is gorgeous, and mortal, and he flattered me. Nobody’s impervious to that combination. It would be forgivable even if I were human.

So, so what if he deserves to shave again, to have more affairs and to record an album of his own work, which is good, if not brilliant, because he is a better songwriter than I am, as much as that pains me to admit? So what if he fixed my guitar, and that in his mind all he’s done is initiate a casual relationship with his own audience of one, his new Franco-American bandmate who lets him talk about records? It was done so innocently on his part, and so much without design that I do feel he has earned a continued existence. But the facts are what they are. Why should he live any more than the rest of them? Any more than I did? I wasn’t born bad, after all, and neither was he. I wanted to be good, but nobody would let me. And let’s not call it sex either, because there’s nothing about Delford that I can hold over anybody. I could once. For a while it was like a secret power, having a part of the city in my back pocket, another life to which I could slip away. As if I’d claimed some of Louis’ territory for my own. But it’s not secret anymore, and it’s not powerful.

And he doesn’t know about _you_ , after all, Delford, and that takes some of the fun out of it. Louis aside, he doesn’t know that this is all done for your amusement, because if I catch your eye, because if I’m exactly what you want, you’ll transform me and make me eternal. Perhaps I cheated on all of them, if I think about it, with that expectation, with you. Monogamy is not natural for vampires. I’m not even sure it’s natural for people. But your love is flawed and insubstantial and invasive and Louis and I are not in any meaningful way “together,” even if he did kiss me last week, once, gripping my arm in the parking lot. Monsieur Mixed Messages, I called him, spitefully, while secretly inhaling his closeness as I did Delford’s alcoholic blood. So I’ll sleep with anyone I choose now, it means nothing (maybe I should replace Bon Jovi with Sinead O’Connor? I do feel as if the evening has almost got to that point, quite frankly. And Good Lord, I’ve inadvertently written myself into _Bridget Jones’ Vampire Diary_ ).

But I won’t do it. Delford is sleeping or dead, and Quinn I’ve got to let hang or he’ll be bored with me. I won’t speak to David and he knows why, nor Rowan, and she doesn’t, but I do. But I will not email Louis. I will not draw on _Brokeback Mountain_ , tell me you’ll kill me for needing somethin’ I don’t hardly never get. You are too much for me Louis, you whoreson sonofabitch, I wish I knew how to quit you. I could. I’ve already written the quote, it would just be a matter of a deft copy-paste. But I will not email him and I will not say it. Even if I know you’d love watching his reaction if I did. He’s read the book, you know. I suspect he never spoke to me about it because he anticipated that I would do exactly what I did after the film came out, which is to stop calling him Heathcliff (sometimes Cathy) and begin calling him Ennis. 

I won’t, however, because I am so sick of criticism I cannot even bring myself to begin an exchange that I would win. I don’t want to be criticized anymore, at all, by anyone. I might have even said it in session. Goddamn you, just tell me I’m perfect, just once. I know it isn’t true. It doesn’t have to be true. It’s only that maybe if you’d do that, then I might not have to keep wishing for it and I could do some of those things you want me to. So maybe that’s what that kiss was for. But I hate those apologies, which is why I will never make them. If you have to apologize, it’s too late. You’ve told me what I am, I’ve already believed you, because that’s the way I am built, don’t you understand? I am what I’m told to be, but “you’re so easily hurt,” he’d said, and that’s too Goddamned personal, so don’t ask me about it. No apology, ever, will ever do any good.

Oh for fuck’s sake. The urge to copy-paste that is rather strong too, let me tell you. But it will not end well, and I am not too stupid, or too drunk, to know that.

And I haven’t really killed my guitarist, either. He’s moving just enough that I know that, and a part of me is glad. Though a part of me is appalled too. Feeding like this is like limbo, as if I were a parasite and not even a proper monster anymore, that’s what you’ve done to me. I just fed on him a little tonight, honest Abe. Before dawn I plan to drive him back to his own place, which I’ve never seen, though I know where it is. The details were in his mind, along with his real name and his real personal history. But I won’t reveal him here. Delford he goes by, and Delford you’ll know him as. And Delford was born in Tupelo, just like Elvis. Sure thing.

We ought to let him fictionalize. I’m lying too, after all – “you look like the Vampire Lestat,” he’d said, the night I met him at Retroville and decided to join his band instead of draining him in the bathroom. “That band sucked so much they were almost awesome, man. Hair metal is hilarious. I have to show you this clip where this fuckin’ guy is playing a seven necked guitar.” Nice to have another musician to talk to from time to time. Nobody who’ll fill the void, but a warm body to swap records with nonetheless. And perhaps I’m wrong - perhaps Delford will serve the same function for me as Antonie did, back when Louis and I had been living together in New Orleans in the nineteenth century. He was so resigned and haughty about my taking human lovers, Louis, like a put-upon, long-suffering wife. So maybe I’ll turn Delford into a vampire and then Louis will burn him to death for me and I’ll know he cares.

I do wonder if he’d keep wearing the same outfit for all eternity. It’s almost worth doing it to him in order to find out. Did I tell you that Delford wears the same outfit every single time I see him? It’s in a pile on my floor now, but there it is, two-tone sneakers, a pair of vintage slacks of the kind that used to come with a man’s suit but now is found in the better class of thrift store, and a t-shirt with the name of a band on it, preferably a band whose records can only be got through mail-order (tonight, Jeffrey Lewis and The Junkyard, whom I have not heard, but whom I will doubtless be subjected to should this tawdry affair continue). He wears a pin likeness of President Obama on his waistcoat too, though he didn’t vote for him, as he will tell you if you ask. He voted for nobody, as he proudly revealed, but he wears the pin because Alabama is a Republican state, and it appeals to him (or so I assume) to be openly contrary. There’s an art to that, that kind of faux-accidental dressing, and it should be admired.

Ordinarily it is. Ordinarily, I admire it.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t be thinking, get up off my sofa, you spent ejaculation, and get out. I don’t want this here. And that part is my fault, not yours. You shouldn’t feed if you can’t cover it up, and I am far too old to forget something like that.

Too old to forget that you shouldn’t be anything if you can’t cover over it. Profound. I amaze myself. I’m going to send that email. Watch me.

I shall begin like this. Louis, I absolutely did deserve it. I wanted to be special, I wanted to be seen, and that is why no amount of talking can repair it. Nogood Boyo was born up to no good, and God is waiting for that confession, because he already knows exactly what I always was. You know it too, and you told me, and you can’t change your opinion now. I know what you really think. And that, my beloved, is why you, Dylan Thomas, and the therapist, are all Goddamned fucking liars.

So meet me in Gulfport and lie to me some more. My actions will be truthful, but we’ll cover over them. Hell is your expectation, hell is your knowledge, and you knew me so damned well that neither of us could die.

 


	9. The Difficult Second Album

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestat plays a gig with his covers band. Louis attends. Hipsters. Hipsters everywhere. Then, sex. 
> 
> This chapter is way too long, so I have broken it up into smaller parts. It's also likely that I'll continue to chip away at it, which I sincerely hope is not frustrating for you. Still, in the meantime, pour yourself a wine.
> 
>  
> 
> “I plan to stand and decide, but I just slip and I dive,  
> and all the drunks on the side start to hold up their signs -  
> mostly 7s and 9s, but now and then is a 10.
> 
> And if I fell to earth I'd be dead that's for sure,  
> but like I said before it's only water,  
> and it's worthless 'cos it isn't on purpose,  
> but I bob to the surface,
> 
> but a large garbage barge comes,  
> and it drops 20 tonnes of toxic waste on my face,  
> and as I sink from the sun to whatever's to come  
> my last sight is the Bums who all change their signs into 3s, 2s, and 1s.
> 
> And then after this discourse, there's a 3.6 - of course it must be from Pitchfork.”
> 
> (from Jeffrey Lewis, ‘So What If I Couldn’t Take It?’, on A Turn in the Dream-Songs)

The Difficult Second Album

Do you remember that I told you that I threw Louis out of my flat? Louis, with whom you are now well acquainted, but whom if I had to describe afresh I’d probably tell you was my ex-wife? Admittedly, I’ve done that more than once, so I hope you understand the incident I’m referring to. After that fateful “session” I mentioned, in passing, chapters ago. I did promise to tell you about that eventually, didn't I? Well, I can’t taunt you forever, even if I’d like to. So I'm telling you about it now.

Or at least, I’m going to hint at it by telling you a story about something that happened a week later. The hints are not subtle, but alright, yes, I concede that they are _slightly_ less than full disclosure, so I’ll trust you to pay attention. Louis would approve of that, at least. That’s perhaps the only thing he will let me do when it comes to writing. “Show them, don’t tell them so didactically,” he’d said via email, in the first round of editing the original proofs for this story. “Much can be indicated through implication,” he continued, and of course he would say that, because that is what he thinks, in general, about communication. Much can also be indicated by actually saying the thing aloud and meaning it, if that hadn’t occurred to you, Louis. But that’s fine. Edit my book. No, in earnest I want you to. I don’t know why I trust his opinion of my writing when his own is so dreary. 

As a matter of fact, I don’t. I know what he’ll say to me about this chapter, and I know what he’ll say when I protest, and I suspect I engage with it out of some strange desire for self-flagellation. I told you I made him to be my conscience – I suppose my critic as well. But I must admit to being slightly disappointed that his criticisms are so familiar. Nobody should write when they’re drunk, he says, for example. Not even Hemingway (his exact words regarding chapter eight were “please don’t write when you’re drunk. Particularly, please don’t write to me.” But of course, he’d say that too, because he thinks he has claimed the patent to drunken misery forever). Really, Louis. For someone who claims to believe in the power of avant-garde literature, you might occasionally vary your responses. 

So thank God for you, darling. Yes, you. I haven’t forgotten. You know how to adore me without criticism, and that is as it should be. None of Louis’ criticisms matter, really. Not when you and I have such an understanding. You’re here now anyway, and we’re speaking, no matter how much work it took. And while you are here, won’t you let me give you some more advice? Because I have to tell you something that you need to know. I have to tell you that you really shouldn’t ever say “forever.”

Oh, don’t be mad at me. It’s one word, it’s not unreasonable. And the rules aren’t any different even if you live forever, and I had to learn about that the hard way. So let me give you the benefit of my experience, since we’re such good friends now. Never say it. If you must marry, then say “until death,” or “while convenient.” If you love somebody but prefer to keep things modern and unconventional, then “while this lasts” should be equal parts sufficient and debonair. But never, ever say forever. Eventually you’d have realized it yourself but you, my dear, are far too precious for such a cruel disappointment as that discovery, and so I shall spare you. No need to thank me, though of course, thanks are appreciated.

I don’t even need to tell you myself, because do you know who understands this perfectly? Judy Blume. I’m quite serious. I know you think I’m joking, but I’m not. I wish there’d been teen novels when I was young. I think I’d have had a much more pleasant life had there been some equivalent to Judy Blume in eighteenth century France. Of course, the one impediment to this alternate world history is that I was unable to read as a human youth, but let us not get bogged down in tedious detail. Nicki could have read them to me, if they were translated. You remember Nicolas, don’t you? My last human lover. I’m sure you remember what happened to him. Well, in life as in literature, sometimes the sentiment matters above the practicality.

Perhaps it was because of Nicki – he would have hated them, but he’d have read them for me – but recently I read what I think is all of them, every Judy Blume novel, and I cannot believe I have missed this significant and bounteous canon in my previous perusals of human thought. My current favorite is actually called _Forever…_ and it is about what I am telling you. It is so much about what I am telling you that I fell asleep at my computer this morning while trying to write about it. _Forever…_ , as you see, is a novel about a young woman who has sex for the first time and then the relationship ends badly. Yes. You see where I’m going with this.

Grant me the grace, however, of not pulling a Louis about it. What I mean to say to you is not quite so simplistic as you doubtless expect. I’ve read it three times now, and it’s pertinent in more ways than the obvious, not only because each of these readings was done consecutively over one evening, curled up with the dog, and that that evening was last night. It’s not only pertinent because it’s new to me, I promise. I’m telling you now, things are _clear_ , chéri. Like a good mother, Judy understands me even if she does not approve, and she loves me, and she understands you too, trust me on that. So don’t say forever. You’ll regret it. Take Judy’s word.

So about this girl. Katherine. Katherine Danziger (isn’t that a marvelous name? I think the characters are Jews). See here – she has sex with her boyfriend, and her mother says to her, “be careful Katherine, because after you’ve had sex you can’t go back to holding hands.” Katherine doesn’t care about that, and I don’t blame her. Nobody wants to die a virgin. I was in no danger of that even before Nicki, but I didn’t want to die without loving him perfectly. So Katherine has sex, just as we did, and she loves him, just as I did. And for a little while everything is perfect and wonderful.

But not forever. You can tell that from the title, can’t you? You’re a connoisseur of that kind of thing by now; you know that titles are important. What happens in the story is that she, Katherine, wishes to move on afterwards, but she feels too guilty for her boyfriend’s feelings. She realizes then that she should have considered the advice that came by way of her Grandmother: that it is necessary to think, when entering a relationship, about how it will end. No matter how much you think you love a person, Grandma’s advice opined, you won’t mean forever forever. Funny that a human Grandmother knew that. Funny that Judy knows it; what forever actually means is something very, very different from anything you can say to a lover. 

Trust me on this. I’m not going to tell the story of my learning this here. You’ve either read about it or you haven’t. And besides, the time I had with Nicki was one of extremely few periods in my life that I feel I’ve previously described with any real accuracy (probably because he didn’t live, so there’s no chance of my winning anything through his reading what I had to say about loving him). I will tell you some of it, as the part you need to know is that I said forever to him, and I shouldn’t have, and you also need to know why. And you should know that it was a lie just as surely as everything else I say to the people I love is a lie. But if you believe nothing else I tell you, believe this: I didn’t know then that I was lying.

I couldn’t knowingly lie to Nicki about anything, not really. Oh, I told some lies and some of them worse than others, but never really. Really, I made my mistakes with Nicki by confessing things I should have lied about, by being drawn into admitting things when really I should have left them alone. But let’s not get distracted here. What I want to tell you is that I meant it. And that the first time I let him fuck me in the ass, I cried. Not because it hurt, you’ll understand (though it did) but because it was wonderful. The pain itself was not really well described as pain, but more than that, it gave him so much pleasure, and I could see that so clearly. In our discussion about it, it had seemed so strangely vulnerable to me that I had been frightened of it, and letting him have it as I had had touched him. I could see that. He was honored by it, and he really did like it, so much so that he seemed carried away by joy. All of this was visible to me and it made me cry.

He didn’t even roll his eyes – he never once rolled his eyes at me when I cried, and upon reflection, I don’t know how he didn’t, because if I had been in his place I would have. I cried differently back then, you see. Which is to say I did it with relative ease and not at all as I’ll do it toward the end of this chapter. I cried over everything that happened to me, good or bad, because I was twenty years old and in love and sometimes mired in genuine existential angst and everything was significant. He must have been utterly sick of it.

So I don’t know what he thought that I’d cried when he fucked me. He wanted to stop when I did, I know that. I remember his voice, the way he sounded. This rough burr that he had when we were doing it, as if I distracted him, as if I choked him up. “Hey, what’s the matter?” he asked me (and for some reason, his words translate automatically to English in my recollection, though obviously then he spoke in French).

“I love you,” I’d said. “Nicki, I love you so much.”  
“But you’re crying,” he’d said. He did not say “again,” though he might reasonably have done.  
“Because it’s so intimate,” I said. “Because it’s so beautiful, because this is really love.”

He smiled then. How I loved his smile. It was crooked and subtly nasty and it was so rare sometimes, because everyone I fall in love with is a fucking depressive. It was especially precious to me though, I still remember that.

“You’re always so dramatic,” he’d said, but the way he said it, it was a beloved particularity and not a criticism. “Not everything is a stage performance.”

“I know that,” I’d said, and he’d smiled, and he’d kissed me, and he’d thrust into me, and it had hurt. But it also felt good, very good, in a way that’s difficult to translate, especially since it was so long ago. This was more than two hundred and fifty years ago, after all. 

But you know, I’ll try to anyway. Because in a sense, this is what this chapter is about, and so you should know about it. It was some particular bodily sensation, a sharp, vibrating blossom of pleasure, from somewhere deep inside of me. And this spectacular unusualness of feeling filled up by him. Of being penetrated, something I hadn’t understood, and wouldn’t understand truly until after death, the joy and the glory of being opened up and entered. His hands were around my hips, pulling at them, and I was rock hard and quivering, feeling something that I recognized as the first steps on that beautiful road to a complete, ecstatic, utter loss of control. 

This was unusual for me. I still remember that too. I was very demanding. Most of the time, no matter how nice it was, anything we were doing, I needed some friction, some touching of the instrument itself - beyond this kind of incidental brushing - before I’d start to come. Something about this, however, something about him, and about me, something about us and how much I loved him made it different. I cried. And when I saw him start to climax – I knew that face, I would know it even beyond death – I beat him to it, and I came harder than I ever had in my life. I saw God! I witnessed the creation of the universe!

The point, in short, is this: of course I thought it was forever. _It seemed like forever at the time._

You understand this, don’t you? Despite my adult panache and decisiveness I was, in matters of love, to all intents and purposes a teenaged boy. I couldn’t untangle the awkwardness and the beauty of sex from the complexity and the eventual horror of loving him. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know who was watching. I especially didn’t know that one’s romantic notions of forever are strikingly distinct from the thing that forever actually is. If Judy had been around back then, I might have learned this lesson from Katherine, but she was not, and I did not, and that is one of the reasons I feel so obligated to tell you. Take it from someone who knows! I know from forever, as they say. And forever is not like that.

That is the very thing, though. You can only try not to say it, because you shouldn’t say it, but you will. Oh, you will. I don’t say this to criticize. I know you can’t live like that, sensible and rational in matters of love, because love is not sensible, and it never was, and you will hurt and be hurt and you will find it delicious, saying “forever” to each other long into the night. Some of us will even be cruel about it, saying it where we know we _might_ lie, but choosing not to examine our motives. Judy understands us. She forgives us for it. She knows you didn’t say it because you _are_ cruel. She knows you lied because you didn’t _exactly_ know that you were lying. Perhaps you even lied because you honestly believed it to be the truth. And if you can understand this about me, and I can understand this about Katherine, then I can understand this about Louis. 

I told you not to pull a Louis on it, didn’t I? Now you know why. Perhaps this is strange to you, given how much I’ve identified, but I’m not the Katherine in the story I’m about to tell here. No, in this story, Katherine is Louis. It’s unusual to think of him like that, as a pretty teen girl, but it’s not entirely ridiculous. He has something in common with teen women, being coquettish and unconvincingly unaware of his own strange powers. Louis is a great deal vainer than he admits, you know. And I know he’s aware of his own considerable beauty. He mentions it in his book, don’t you remember? Daniel – human Daniel, before he was turned – had asked him if he’d been handsome when he was alive, and Louis had more or less plainly said yes. How I laughed when I read that admission. Louis is vain. And actually, he is a great deal shallower than he admits too. If Daniel had been slightly less good-looking than he is, I personally suspect, he might not have lived to tell the tale he told.

(That’s speculative, of course. There is more chance of Hell’s literally freezing over than there is of Louis’ ever admitting to that. Sure it’s speculative. But it is also true. Isn’t it, Louis?)

Anyway, I was suddenly aware when I read that sentence in Louis’ book that nothing significant about him had changed during our near-century of separation. Louis was, as he always was, vain and shallow, despite his considerable intellectual depth. And he was, as he always was, horribly guilty about being so, partly because of that considerable intellectual depth. Filthy and fastidious. That’s Louis. You remember. God! I almost tried to find him them. Daniel had transcribed this unknowingly (probably), but I knew what Louis was doing. Wavering between despaired acceptance and nihilistic admission, between hiding it and crushing it down as if his pettiness didn’t exist. Oh, my love, I wanted to find him and say. How you’re built of contradiction. If only you knew how lovable it made you. 

The same thing is true of Katherine Danziger, because she is loveable, even if perhaps I’m treating her character with a touch more existential anxiety than it requires (it’s a book about sex for kids after all. Still, isn’t that one’s first primer for human anxiety?) She would have made a good vampire too, beautiful as she is, and coming to terms so easily with her regrets. Then again, perhaps she is one already. She and her boyfriend are frozen there, in _Forever…_ living only as long as the story does, never able to change any more than they do in those pages. Really, all novels are about vampires. And really, all love stories are the same, whether they lie or tell the truth about this lesson; you shouldn’t say forever, darling, you have no idea what it means. And yet, you will. You have been a liar from the day you were born, the quintessential performer, possessing the original sin of wanting to be loved in return. If only Judy could have helped you! 

I remember that so well, you know. Sometimes I remember things accurately, and that in particular I remember more than I want to. My stomach was fluttering from his nearness and it seemed to me that it was the only word I could have said have said to him. I love you darling, forever, in spite of monsters, and him saying back to me, forever and ever, it was always forever with you. But we were liars. The pair of us. Nothing but liars. Liars who are not done lying. Liars who confound these lies with strange performances and empty therapy sessions and the editing of novels as if they were aesthetic affairs. Liars who are afraid to admit their lies, as if believing in the lie hard enough will make it transform into truth.

Judy knows about that too, somehow. Liars trying to threaten a lie into truthfulness. In _Forever…_ that character is Michael (Wagner. Irony?), Katherine’s boyfriend, and Michael, in this story to follow, is me. I didn’t notice that until I read _Forever…_ a second time. I shouldn’t tell you that it made me furious. It occurred to me as I put the novel down for the second time last night, that possibly Louis was right about the benefits of reading slowly. Perhaps, if I’d read _Forever…_ at a normal, human pace, I’d only have needed to read it once to make the conclusions I’m making. The one complication is this: I’ve never had a normal human pace because I couldn’t read when I was human. Louis will say what he says to me because he doesn’t know that I only know how to be a vampire, because I was never really old enough as a person. Or that I was never really old enough to understand forever. I shouldn’t tell you that it made me angry again. It did though. A stereotype of myself, as Louis tells me in his editing notes, that’s what I am sometimes.

But then I read the novel a third time. This time, not being Katherine, while being angry at myself, and at her, I began to notice how sensitively Michael was painted. As if I were allowed sympathy for him too, even as he were wrong. Judy is like a good mother in that way, as I’ve said, understanding even if she does not approve, and I was comforted by that, the fact that she loved me even if I were terrible. She’s even forgiven me for stalking, though that is in a different novel, about an Italian boy who spies on a neighbor girl with binoculars, and then masturbates. But if she can forgive me that, then perhaps I ought to forgive Louis too, for being a composite of his experiences and his desires and prejudices, for being an accidental Katherine. Judy insists that I should, I think, via Michael, whom Katherine no longer loves, even if she hurts for him. Just as Louis no longer loves me, even as he edits.

So Louis, I’ll forgive you. I’ll stop holding you to the lie you told, because I know you meant it then. Isn’t that spectacularly magnanimous of me? Aren’t you impressed? I’ve ruined your life, and your un-life. As you’ve said several times, and not all of them in sudden anger. And I’m sorry.

Because, you know, shortly after I finished reading last night, and before I started writing, Louis telephoned. As if he could tell psychically what I was doing, reading teen novels and forgiving him. “But really, how are you?” he’d asked me straight away and I think I'd said “fine,” because if he was going to ask a banal question like that then I was going to give a banal answer. And then we hadn’t said anything to each other for twenty minutes, until finally I’d said “are you there?” and he’d hung up. Then I’d smashed the phone to pieces. Irritating. Doubly irritating, as most of my numbers were in it and I don’t keep a paper address book anymore. But really, that’s my responsibility, as angry as it made me at the time. I didn't have to smash it. I could have processed my anger into this novel, as I am doing now. And my American business manager has all of my important numbers, and I can find the therapist on Google. So I forgive him. I forgive Louis. At any rate, I will not, as I am occasionally wont to do in such circumstances, bill him for a replacement phone. 

Still, I wish I had Katherine’s mother, or an actual acquaintance with the living Judy so that I might talk about this with her. I wish that substitute mother would praise me for my restraint, because mine has long gone now, and in the world of Judy Blume’s American teen novels, mothers are people who do not leave their teenaged sons to their own romantic failures. I don’t know what my own mother would say if I told her this though. I don’t remember anything she said about Louis when she was here, only what I’d said: “we’re just fighting, mother. We do that sometimes.” I think she’d asked me if it were serious. That was kind of her, and I hadn’t known what to say. Yes. Impossibly serious. The End Of The World serious, an absolute disaster. But I hadn’t said anything like that. She makes a face when I call her mother. It’s very subtle, and I suspect she doesn’t mean to. I suspect she means to permit me to do it, because she does love me, or she did, and she knows that to me it is meaningful. I think honestly that she, like Louis, finds me exhausting.

But as I’ve said, she’s long gone now. I’ll see her again, some time in the unanticipated future, because she did not say forever to me. She’s left now and I’d anticipated that. I shall make do with Judy. My substitute mother, my substitute confessional. Are you there, God? It’s me, Lestat. And God, isn’t there something wrong with this situation, where because I can’t be angry, all I can be is bereft?

But I digress. Again. I’m doing that a lot lately, digressing. In general, and often without intent or design. You’ll forgive me. As I’ve told you before, one can rely on vampires not to change terribly much. After that night I’ve mentioned, I didn’t see Louis for a week (or so. It doesn’t really matter). I don’t know where he went. Back to his cluttered apartment, I suppose. I admit to walking past it once (alright, three times, but no binoculars so in that at least I am doing a little better at adulthood than the Italian boy in Judy’s book. _Then Again, Maybe I Won’t_ , that one is called). The Chevette was parked on the street outside, so he hadn’t driven out of town. I didn’t follow him when he went out (alright, once) but I assumed he was there, hunting, and probably reading and on the nights he felt rakishly technological, he might treat himself to a digital film. But I left him alone. There was nothing I could have said to him except, “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t going to say that. Especially since it would have come with a tacit coda of “and you were right,” which did not so much make it impossible to say as actually unthinkable. There would be no apology, and so there would be no speech between us. Though once or twice (more than once), I had the distinct impression that he knew I was there.

Yet he did not ask me to go. Nor in any way ask me to stop. He didn’t acknowledge me, but he didn’t forbid me either. This was why, I think, that I’d hoped against hope that he’d turn up for the Atomic party as he had said he might on the night we had finally made it. Of course, nobody should trust pillow talk to be reliable, but I had, because Louis is such an honorable gentleman that even though he was is in his short pants and undershirt when he had said it, said it he had. The truth in his words, in my experience, is not affected by dress. “Perhaps I will,” he’d said, and, “I’m curious.” And perhaps he was. I took it as promise. I was right to. Honesty in whatever clothing. How very unlike me he sometimes is.

I’m not sure he’s affected by dress at all, actually. Or rather, I’m not sure _how_ he is affected by dress. I don’t know what Louis likes me to wear, for example, as his criticisms and his praises are the same color, are equivalent in weight and value. Does he find me attractive, or arrogant? I’m never entirely sure, and at times I wonder if he keeps it so on purpose, so that I’m forced to rely upon his involuntary motions, on his breathless gazes, on his flushes and starts, to even know that he finds me anything at all.

He does, of course. I know this for certain, because when I’ve been bad, as I had been on the night I threw him out, I am required to make it up to him. Dressing to advantage, and colognes and things, an ecstatic stage performance. They all work for him. He’ll never admit that, (more chance of Hell’s literally freezing over) but they do. Louis, to violently détourn the popular phrase, is only human, and they have worked forever, and that, at least, is a legitimate use of that word.

And besides, I love this fashion for very tight jeans, and pants in different colors. They show off the definition of the body beneath, and I have pairs in all shades of the rainbow. I’ve got a pair in red, which is my favorite, and he must appreciate them too, surely. And I don’t even have to cut my hair to be fashionable now – as if I would – though I do tend to tie it up when we’re playing, for practicality’s sake. And I can wear all of my t-shirts, even though they’re from the eighties and look it. Nowadays, stores sell such t-shirts pre-faded and young people call it “vintage” if they’re real. I have rescued Iron Maiden, Metallica and Slayer from the daytime sleepwear section of my wardrobe for nighttime regular use. That’s fantastic, isn’t it? Fashion’s cyclicity? Couldn’t that affect him nostalgically? I thought that anyway, while I was dressing that night.

It wasn’t that stupid a fantasy. Times have changed, of course. But Louis hasn’t. And it’s remarkable, if one lives as long as I have, how much young people in general have not. There’s little variation in the apathetic passion I recall from my own authentic youth. There’s obsessive grandeur, there’s that defaulted sense of one’s own significance, that belief in the end of the world. And there’s that fascination with death, because if you’re right on the verge of the part of life that is speeding toward it, you’re still far enough away that it seems like narrative drama. I think that’s how I slip in so easily here. Both into what I was doing for Louis, and into what I was doing for the band. I was always good at it.

I’m especially good at it now. Sometimes, lately, I even wear the lensless glasses they sell in the chain-stores (well, they have a lens. It’s just that it is plain and not curved – they do nothing to correct anybody’s vision, they’re simply a fashion item). When I put those on that night, I did it for fashion, but really for the purpose of anticipating Louis’ rebuke. Even if they’d been real glasses, he’d have said something. Vampires don’t need glasses, you can see perfectly well. I told you. There’s no such thing as praise from Louis, only criticisms, only the drawing of blood. That has been true forever.

Though perhaps I do need the glasses in one genuine way? If I squint hard enough I can almost remember how it felt to be as young as I look in the mirror. I shouldn’t be squinting. I joined the band just to have something to do while in town, but that doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying myself, or that I don’t mean it. And yet it is false, because the kind of vision I used to have, that makes it true, is beginning to desert me. Forget about Louis for one moment and take these false glasses themselves - notice how absolutely acknowledged falseness is a part of a genuine self in this time. And I’m good at that! I’m great at it! It’s only that something about this performance rides dangerously close to another performance I’m doing. Like Michael, perhaps it’s the defensive knowledge of the lie, the proximity to its revelation? The name of the bar we played in is “Retroville” and I cannot for the life of me tell what that is supposed to say about all of this. 

What I can tell is a story. I forget that I’m telling it, I think, because I want so much to talk to you. Because I’m lonely. Because everybody is lonely in this time, and there’s nothing special about my falseness. That’s what I’ve realized. All of it, like an oil fire off the coast, like the future of the world, like the assumption that anything, ever, could ever be different than it is now, is imaginary. Let us all admit that at once.

And let us imagine: me, well dressed, turned out as if my body were really the body it pretended to be. Imagine us playing songs from the past, which for Delford and Shanti and Jimmy-James was a past in which they had never existed. Imagine me acting as if this were true for me also. But also, imagine me not acting, because in a way it was true for me. I had never been _this_ Lestat in that time. Even if I had worn this exact t-shirt, I’d never worn it with red jeans and glasses. Even if I’d lied on stage before, I’d never before _known_ that I was lying. 

And imagine this too: imagine Louis coming. Imagine him coming every bit as inevitably, and every bit as unusually as I had. Imagine him. He came at some point during the set. I did not see him enter. But when he took his seat, when he sat there impeccable, and immaculately fashionable, I saw him immediately.

I didn’t doubt that his dress was for my benefit, his tailored and slim-fitting black suit. He wore it with a green plaid shirt, untucked, and a skinny black tie and neat leather shoes, and there was no way in Hell he’d chosen those clothes unthinkingly. He looked right here – the outfit was succinctly on trend, and of course he looked twenty-five. But his hands, as ever, would not go in his pockets, and his posture was such a composite of anachronistic gentility that it marked him out from the bodies around him. Like a fire on a beach at night, like a white blaze in the darkness, of course I saw him. There was no way I could not have seen him, and there was no way he had not intended me to. That was inevitable.

I went to him as soon as I got off stage. I didn’t even wait to unplug myself, or pack anything. I knew I’d answer for that later, but I didn’t care. And of course I knew that Louis’ visibility was done precisely so I would do this, that his sitting in stillness and patience and shabby but beautiful dress was done so that I would come to him instantly and he would not have to come to me. Of course I knew that. That was forever. I did it anyway. 

And the first thing I said to him was, “so you came.”


	10. The Difficult Second Album (part two)

The Difficult Second Album (part two)

“Yes, I came,” he said. It was pointed, though you’d have to have been listening to him intently to notice that. I was, of course. His hands were at rest on the table, and his expression indicated little, but this careful performance was such that it had commanded my full attention.

I hadn’t noticed before, but the ceiling fans were on slow rotate in here. They didn’t break up the cigarette smoke very much, though they did add to the cinematic aura of quiet challenge that Louis’ presence had seemed to create. Subtly disturbed, the smoke had mixed in with the sweaty, living smell of young human bodies, while Louis sat with a chilled bourbon in front of him (that smelled good too from here, like a sinister, lethal woodsmoke). Even the lights were fetchingly noir-ish. But mostly there was him. And his black and white stillness. I knew better than to admit that outright.

“I like the suit,” I said, slipping into the seat beside him. “I won’t say it suits you. I feel I’m above punning at this stage of my life.

Louis said nothing. He looked at me sideways as I seated myself, but that was all he did. For a second I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Then I realized he probably intended me to be so, and inwardly I shrugged off the sensation. I slung my arm over the back of my chair as if I were at ease. “I take it you’ve forgiven me, then.”

“I’m here,” he said. “Take that as you will.”  
“Do you have to be such a prick, Louis?”  
“Do you?” he said. Oh, touché. I felt myself starting to get a little excited.

Shanti gave me a look from the stage. It wasn’t a terribly angry look, more of a perfunctory “what the fuck?” but I looked back at her imploringly. I have a thing to do, baby, fold up my stuff for me. She shrugged and said something to Jimmy. I couldn’t hear it from here. Well. I could have done. I simply chose not to. Jimmy shot a glance at me too, but I’d turned back to Louis and had forgotten about them both.

“Yes,” I said to Louis, in a low and actually quite threatening voice. It had no effect, except that his raised his eyebrows a little. He found me vulgar. Or rather, he wanted me to understand that he found me vulgar.

“So what did you think?” I asked him, ignoring that. “Doesn’t it take you back? Isn’t it endearing how cyclical human interests are?”  
“I think,” said Louis, “that you can probably predict what I think, and extrapolate from there.”  
I snorted. “Darling,” I slid my hand under his. “You’re a jerk.”

Louis inclined his head very slightly. He caught my eye, drawing my gaze to our hand-holding. One of his eyebrows went up. Then it dropped again. I expected him to drop my hand too, but he didn’t. I pressed my advantage. I began to caress the back of his hand with my thumb. His fingers curled ever so slightly over mine.

“Let’s not fight,” I said. “It was nice of you to come. There’s no need to be so sullen.”

“We’re not fighting,” he told me. Then he did remove his hand from mine. He folded it back into his other.

My own felt empty. Precisely what is it that we are doing then? In another circumstance, I might have asked him, but he’d never have answered it here, in public, even if the public were human. What I did do was stretch the abandoned hand out in front of me as if I were examining it for flaws, but that was just something to occupy myself. Since we’re been talking so much about teen novels, you know, and since you like that, I may as well tell you this – do you know how much Louis reminds me of the young woman in _A Little Princess_? Sara Crewe. He does. Immaculate in all surroundings, perfect in bearing, as if there is some important secret about him that nobody knows.

And yes, Judy Blume’s advice is far better than that tedious bourgeois instruction in carriage and pious philanthropy that Frances Hodgson Burnett gives to her young readers. We both know that. But Louis had clearly taken Sara's lessons to heart when he’d read it to me. His lack of movement – his potential for movement- was as mesmerizing as it had ever been. It was remarkable too how carefully he masked his inhumanness and perhaps, in that same other circumstance in which I’d get him to tell me his intentions, I might have complimented him on this work as well. The drink, yes, but all of us do that. That’s easy. Louis’ own details were far more artful. Handkerchief in his pocket in a triangle, because perhaps he would need one, being feeble and human. A package of cigarettes in front of him, something he has since told me that he frequently buys as “rent” in human businesses. They were an effective prop even if the packet were never opened, he said later, though apparently sometimes he lit them and laid them in the ashtray to burn.

I didn’t know that about him then. At the time, the package merely seemed strange. Then, after a moment’s reflection, it seemed clever. I wondered if he’d ever actually smoked. He’d be a good smoker, draped around a cup of cheap coffee in a late night diner, or artfully half-hidden in the corner of a bar. Then again, perhaps he simply liked to hold something that he could get away with setting on fire. I thought about saying that to him, but I knew exactly the kind of frosty expression I would earn myself if I did. And so I did not.

I had to say _something_. How long had we sat here without speaking? Recorded music had come over the sound system, and I looked away from Louis as if I were listening to it. It being Eighties Night, the record was Robert Palmer’s _Heavy Nova._ I’d heard most of it first-hand shortly after Palmer had actually written it. I remember very little of what he said about the songs when he had flashed them to the room, though I do recall the fact that he smoked more or less continuously as he played the tape. How strange nostalgia is, with all of its surprising turns. Look at where it's lead me now! Another confession. This one is just for you, my dear, you can never tell anybody.

It is this: if I think of all the times I’ve said forever, that may be the worst. I had told myself, and maybe Robert Palmer too, maybe everyone who was at that party or that I met in the studio during that time. There would be some kind of forever value in being a recording star, I had said, or something like it. I'm that much of an idiot. I'd not only said it, I had believed it – I didn’t know then that I was lying!

But how could I have? They had written me letters and come into my rooms and sent photographs of themselves and there was pleasure in it, almost satisfaction. That had been purposeful enough, and meaningful enough, and exciting enough to feel like forever. Even if it had lasted only as long as I had needed it to last, even if it was gone as soon as I asked it to go. Even if Louis had rebuked me for it. He had come back to me too. That kind of forever – forever I’ll be interesting to you - that’s very powerful.

And later, Quinn had written to me just like that, so perhaps it had lived even longer. Do you remember that? How he sent me the cameo with his picture in it and these words, "well, think about it, Lestat. I'm young, I'm stupid. And I’m pretty.” How I had loved him for his frankness and his desperation! We’d never have fought like this, Quinn and I. He’d never have dared. And he’d smoked, Quinn, even after death. Uselessly but compulsively, as Palmer had done, and as Jimmy was smoking now, the cigarette stuck thoughtlessly in the corner of his mouth as he packed his pedals into a cardboard box. Under the full glare of Louis’ judgment, in human clothes in Retroville, not very far from Bienville Square, the adoration that I had found cloying before I had left Blackwood was suddenly recalled to me as easy and comforting. Delford and Shanti had gone. Outside, presumably, to the little courtyard Retroville keeps, to get high. I thought about saying this to Louis, taking another shot at our clearly abortive conversation, do you know what they’re doing out there, isn’t it sweet, did you ever try it? Or failing that, I’m sure you know Robert Palmer, what do you think of the design of the videos? And why don’t you smoke one of those, just to amuse me?

But I digress. I doubted he’d do that either. He still hadn’t moved. Only the fact that he blinked now and again reminded me that he was capable of it. His expression was utterly flat, and it was not forgiving. Not knowing what else to do, I tore the plastic and took one of the cigarettes out of the packet without asking. The smell was pronounced, even without my having lit it. They’d smelled this in Europe, I thought. Without it, I might never have come to the New World. Another profound thought that I did not share. Was that the beginning of my current, unsettling tendency toward endless digression?

“I wonder if I can?” I said. “Have you got something to light it with? I’d like to try.”

Wordlessly, Louis picked up the candle at the centre of the table. He held it towards me and I inhaled. Some smoke came into my mouth and then went out again. I don’t think I was doing it properly, though I didn’t really see the appeal.

“You breathe it in,” he said. “It’s smoke inhalation, that’s the basic principle.”  
“I can’t really. It’s not working. It gets to the back of my throat and then doesn’t go anywhere.”  
He didn’t say anything.

“Quinn does it. But maybe that’s just habit.”

Still nothing. And that had been deliberately incendiary.  
“You’re not still mad at me.”  
“No,” he said.  
“I suppose it was inevitable that we’d start fighting again. It was too good to last.”  
“We’re not fighting,” he said. “Put that out, you look ridiculous.”

Once more, I saw the battered elbows on his jacket– the suit wasn’t new, where else had he worn it? I wanted to ask him, or to criticize him for it, but I couldn’t. It was if he intended to blunt himself by blunting his outfit. As if a dirty jewel were somehow less valuable. But it hadn’t worked, and the Little Princess in him must have known it wasn’t going to. I leaned back in my chair, holding my own hand, with the cigarette, as starlets did in the movies.

“It’s glamorous,” I said. “Stop being so damned disapproving, if we’re not fighting.”

He smiled. Quickly, and faintly, but I saw it. “I suppose it goes with that outfit you’re wearing.”

“What, this outfit?” I drew on the cigarette again, though uselessly. “This outfit is fucking fabulous, you’re just jealous.”  
I’d made him smile again. Score two for me. “Yes, probably. Though you really don’t need glasses. You can see perfectly well.”

“They’re fashionable.”  
“As you wish.”  
“They are.”  
“Still unnecessary, non? But that, of course, is the point of fashion in general.”  
“So I guess you came here to fence with me all night long?”  
“No.”  
“Well, what do you want, then?”  
“Are you alright?” he asked me, suddenly.  
“Yes, of course I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be?”

He didn’t answer. He kept his eyes upon me, but I couldn’t tell if they rested there or were busy examining. Uncomfortable again. This time the knowledge that it was undoubtedly intentional on his part helped nothing. I put on a tone that was somewhere between innocent and mocking, which was nowhere like the way I felt. “Did you worry about me?”

“I’ll always worry about you,” he said. “You don’t think much about the impact of what you do, on others.”

I had not expected that. It was flagrantly against the rules. I butted the cigarette out on the table, sorry as soon as I did it, but having to do something to avoid yelling at him in a vampire's voice rather than a human one. It burnt my fingers a little. That was what I’d wanted, some kind of physical shock. Unlike the shock of his words, it healed instantly. “What the fuck, Louis?”

Louis picked up the butt and placed it into the available ashtray. That pissed me off. This prim, silent correction of my etiquette, as if it were somehow important. Don’t let us be indecorous toward our livestock, I thought. Good lord, what would happen? As if (but not likely to have been) unaware of my anger, he brushed his hand against his jacket before re-clasping it.

“You drove my car,” I said, stupidly. Nothing. I looked back to the stage in desperation. Everyone had gone now, the next band had started to set up.

“How dare you just…”  
“Don’t take it like that,” Louis said. His expression had not changed, but his voice was quiet.  
“I’ll take it however I damned well please.”

“Lestat,” Louis said. Oh, like a little caress. Unfair, I thought, momentarily, though I didn’t say it. “Try to consider this from my point of view, if you won’t do it for yourself.”  
“I already know your point of view, it’s as predictable as…”  
He interrupted me. “I don’t think that you do.”  
“Don’t you…”  
“What do you think I think, about you?”

But that did make me pause. I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know the answer he wanted, and I suspected, maybe it was paranoid, that anything I did say would be wrong.

“I don’t know, Louis. I can’t read your mind.”  
“I’m sorry you feel you have to,” he said. “As it stands, you should know that I agree with the therapist’s assessment.”  
“Good for you. Why don’t the two of you start a club?”

“Lestat,” Louis said, and it was sharper than it had been. I looked at him. “I don’t want to talk about this in a bar. Just hear what I’ve said.”  
“I don’t want to talk about it in a bar, either. How would you like it if I suddenly dropped in on you and your friends and started talking about your psychological problems? Oh, wait, foolish me, you haven’t got any friends.”  
“So you admit that it is a problem?”  
Touché, again. It was less exciting this time. “I admit that you think it’s a problem.”

A sigh. “And you don’t.”  
“Dredging up things from the distant past is rather beside the point. Of course, if you’re going to ambush me as you did then I’m going to react. It doesn’t mean anything, though.”

“You have…” he seemed to search for words here. He seemed genuinely frustrated, though he was clearly trying to avoid showing me this. That gave me a little comfort. I could get at him eventually. He’d just surprised me, that was all. It just took patience. That or a particular, nasty aplomb. And I had that naturally or I had learned it through living with him.

Louis had continued anyway. “It’s just… such a peculiar understanding of responsibility,” he said. “You forgive yourself the worst atrocities, and then, of the things that could never be your fault, you find ways to tell yourself that they are.”

“You weren’t listening to me,” I told him. “That’s not what I said. I didn’t say ‘it’s my fault,’ I said that there was a rationality and a design to what happened, and that it was particular to me and that it couldn’t have been anyone else, and that nobody else would have reacted as I did. I thought you would like that, you’re such a devotee of narrative, poetic fate. Can you really imagine me as anything other than a vampire?”  
“That’s irrelevant. I’ve only known you as a vampire. That has no bearing on the situation. But there’s nothing inherent in you like that. That’s simply inaccurate.”  
“I’m not like you, blaming my frailties on everyone else. ‘Oh the pain, the pain of it all. I can resist anything but temptation’. If we’re really going to discuss responsibility, then let’s talk about that.”

Louis looked away. His posture was still perfect, of course, but he seemed to become smaller, as if he had retreated from physical space. The way he held himself, one could be forgiven for thinking that he was not as powerful as he was. As if his preternatural body was an incidental container for his fragile soul. My dark demon lover, my philosopher, at the very least he could be counted upon for anguished self-loathing.

“You’re right, of course,” he said.  
“Louis,” I said, cruelly. “Don’t take it like that.”

His eyes had narrowed. His hands were still folded, but they seemed tight now. Clasping himself for strength, I thought.

“If you’re going to argue with me about it, fine,” he said. Then, “but know how I feel.”  
“That doesn’t make any sense."  
“And then, your mother.”

“What about my mother?” My tone was a warning one. I wanted to make absolutely clear that the only acceptable answer was ‘absolutely nothing’, and Louis wisely sidestepped my question.  
“Look,” he said. “I should not have left last week. It was a mistake. Your responses were not rational, and I reacted as if they were. I’ve made that mistake before, the therapist said. I expect something from you that you are…”

I have no idea why I’d let him run on so long, but I cut him off then. “You Goddamned bastard!” I hissed. I didn't want to hiss. I wanted to shout it at him. Really shout it at him. I almost had, but in the nick of time I’d remembered where we were again. This time I hadn't needed the help of the cigarette, and that meant something. It had to. Patience.

But the fact that I could not shout did not mean I was unable to correct him. I did. “I’m not some tragic orphan requiring your feigned affection. Don’t tell me what I feel, Louis, it’s insufferable. Don’t you understand that? I wish you would listen to what I actually say instead of dreaming up some patronizing interpretation.”

“I do listen,” he said. “That is how I know.”  
“You don’t listen. You’ve never listened. You hear just enough to pepper your pre-judgments with the appearance of having listened, but you do not in fact listen to me.”  
“Analyzing the situation is not the same as pre-judg…”  
“I think you’re incapable. I think it would confuse you too much, if things were as complicated as they really are. You’re not as smart as you think you are, Monsi…”  
“Oh mon dieu!” he snapped.  
I was caught between fear and thrill for a second, seeing him become so suddenly animated. I may have grinned at the relief. Louis was speaking, and had doubtless ignored me.

“Do you forget?" he said, "Or do you do this deliberately? I have known you for two centuries, and your patterns... for action, the way you act... they are...you are as predictable as sunrise. Either you accept this or you do not, but this constant obfuscation of fact is… it’s such selfishness! I honestly feel sometimes that I should leave you to rot.”  
“Well,” I said. “You certainly know how to do that.”

He took that as I’d intended. A wave of guilt washed over his face, and he gave a breath that was really more of a wince. But I knew better than to think he was sorry about it. I couldn’t feel anything for it even as his eyes had widened in real, painful distress.

“Is there any point to apologizing for something done so long ago?” he said. His voice wavered a little. Perhaps I’d make him cry. There is certainly no point to my telling you that it would not have been the first time I had done that.  
“I don’t know,” I said, pointedly, taking another cigarette and leaning back into my chair. “Is there?”

I didn’t bother to light it. The object was accessory enough. Something to look at. Something besides him. Louis twisted his mouth. If he wouldn’t cry, then I wondered if he’d yell at me. Probably not. I hadn’t pushed him there yet. Though I would do that too, eventually. I had no doubt of that. The challenge would be to make him yell in the bar.

“Then yes,” he said. “And I doubt I can apologize to the extent I need to. But I do know that the circumstances were extremely specific. I hope I’m not given to such knee-jerk unkindness.”

I swear, only Louis could use an apology as so sharp a weapon. I looked straight back at him.

“That’s not an apology,” I said. “And you, mon cher, are a hypocrite. But you don’t need my permission to leave me. Off you go.”

Oh, he was really suffering now. I could see that in his face. The pleasure in it had come back to me, and with it my power. The power to wound him, to bully him out of his composure. To match his malice thrust for thrust.

“What are you waiting for?”  
“Please,” he said.  
“Such desperation.”  
“Yes.”

That’s right, Louis. Win by admitting it. “But why, mon petit?” I said, sweetly. It was so damned glorious to tease him.  
“You know why,” he said.

It occurred to me then, though perhaps in a different way than it would occur to me later on, just how much power there was in strategic submission. I knew better than to think his innocent need was really innocent. I knew it completely. Yet how persuasive it was, hearing him say that, seeing him look up into my face as if it would tell him something, with his searching, innocent eyes. With his words, or with his lack of words, his discomfort had become something that was no longer amusing to me. I loved him immediately. So much so that my own cruelty hurt me. The fact that it was an utter lie meant nothing.

Well, I wouldn't answer. I would simply leave the table and walk away from him. I'd join my band. I’d wander out there and stand around with them in their tight circle. Maybe there would be some hangers on, someone beautiful to slip my arm around, or just my three, passing a drug cigarette between them. They’d tell me off for leaving the stage, Shanti accusing me of being a “trust fund baby” in a way that was both serious and teasing. Jimmy would want to know about Louis. Not out of any kind of desire for information, but simply because he’d have noticed. Yet I couldn’t do it. Sometime soon I’d have to break the illusion I’d made for them, and with Louis here now, that time seemed closer. Because of that, because of what a lie it would be in proximity to this one, and how harshly I felt that, going to them now seemed impossible.

But I’d forgotten that I hadn’t spoken, again. Louis’ eyes had settled on his hands once more. His green eyes. I was never sure if they’d become more beautiful in death. They seemed strange now, incomprehensible. Perhaps he would leave, perhaps that was coming. Perhaps his entire reason for being here was to gain my permission for it a second time. But you really are unsalvageable, he might have said, you can’t honestly expect me to stay with you. I ought to let him go more gently. I wanted to.

I couldn’t do that either. It was too exhausting to speak about anything that mattered. “What are you thinking, chéri?” I asked him. In an unmediated voice, or at least in a voice that was supposed to sound unmediated.

He wrinkled his brow. “Nothing particularly.”

“That’s not supposed to be a complicated question, Louis,” I said. “I’m not trying to fight with you. The opposite. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”  
“Ah,” he said. “The flesh, it’s misleading. I make the mistake of assuming that I no longer have such deficiencies. I suspect fate means to remind me. That’s…”  
“What on earth do you mean?” I demanded.   


“It doesn’t matter.”  
“Do you even know what you’re saying?” I insisted. “Do you? Have I missed a notification for the Pointe du Lac Tedious Philosophy Hour?”

Nothing. “It’s the Pointe du Lac Tedious Philosophy Hour,” he said, flatly, before turning his head away from me and toward the rest of the bar. I felt briefly ashamed.

“I mean it. What deficiencies? You’re a vampire. You know you’re a vampire. You know what vampires do. Don’t make me have this argument with you again, I don’t have the stamina for this existential crap anymore.”  
He closed his eyes. “I won’t. And don’t speak so loudly about... that, please.”  
“Existentialism?” I said, nastily. “I don’t blame you for being ashamed of that. Nobody needs to be that much of a cultural stereotype. And what else could you possibly want that is…”

I trailed off because Louis blushed. It seemed very much as if he didn’t want to, because every other part of his expression was absolutely rigid. Color infused his cheeks slowly, and then evaporated. But he didn’t move. He didn’t say anything. He just _was_ , until it passed, leaving in its wake a horrible understanding. And I thought – and I do remember this, more or less exactly – what I thought was, oh fuck. And I wish I’d known then about Judy Blume! I’m sure with her guidance I may have handled this better!

Still, when I spoke, I did so very carefully - some instinct had protected me, I suppose. The Patron Saint of Idiot Teenagers. “I don’t like you using the word deficiency.”

“Ah,” he said. “If we will do human things we will have human ironies, non? That’s all I mean.”  
“What ironies?”

He didn’t answer. He was looking out over the bar again as if he’d forgotten my presence. The blush had gone completely by now, but that was remarkable too. He had refused to acknowledge it happening, but he must have known it had done. He must have known how it had affected me, how the scent of his frailty was a frailty in me.

“What ironies, Louis?” I said, more sharply, and he turned back to me.  
“It doesn’t matter. Forget I spoke.”  
“Could you not… would it trouble you to not… just tell me, would you?”

Louis looked pained. “It’s really not… look, a psychic instability produced through pure materiality, for one,” he said. The tone was apologetic. “It’s almost funny, if one thinks about it. It solves nothing. There are infinite ways to interpret a physical event, and as such it can’t really be considered in opposition to thought. Your reaction was one interpretation, one that perhaps I should have anticipated.”

“Nobody considers a physical event in opposition to thought.”  
“You do,” he said. “Don’t you? Isn’t that a part of your continual, thoughtless insistence upon unconsidered action?”

There must be a better word to use than touché. That was a point, certainly. But to give it that metaphor would suggest that his comment had been sporting or fair. It hadn’t been. And he knew it. And I knew that he knew it, so I looked at him, without speaking, and I waited for him to recognize this. I waited for the wince and the eventual cringe that would follow his realization.

They came. “I don’t mean that,” he said, after a moment or two. “I offered. I insisted. I don’t mean to criticize you, only myself. I mean to say that after so long, perhaps there was a logic to my sustained resis… ah, never mind.”

“Louis,” I said, as if being reminded of his own name might stop him from speaking.  
“… a needless complication in this, I don’t wonder if I haven’t…”  
“Louis,” I said, again. He thinned his lips.  
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

Yes, you’ve said that, I thought. But I couldn’t tell if he repeated the phrase out of awkwardness or out of disdain for my lack of understanding, so it was better to pretend ignorance. I did.

“Louis,” I told him, “fucking had nothing to do with it.”

“I don’t…” he said. “Please don’t…” His voice was not loud, though it was urgent.  
“I mean it.”

Louis’ face was impassive. The face beneath that seemed to flicker with extreme discomfort, but he kept his own counsel. He turned away once more. “It’s not important anyway.”

“Listen!” I said. “There was nothing wrong with it! It was nice! Don’t you understand that? Nothing is punishing you for anything!”

“Ah,” he said, and I did not understand why he had said it again. To me it seemed as if my words had registered on him as confusion or anguish, and I had meant them as comfort, I truly had. His expression broke my heart, and almost reflexively I put my hand to his cheek, tilting his face toward mine. For a moment he seemed so lost and so personally hurt by these thoughts that I was overcome by the desire to address him as “baby.” I didn’t. He wouldn't have liked it. And besides, touching him this way was almost enough. Louis did not appreciate the gesture even then.

“Please,” he said, pushing my hand away. He did so gently enough, but the meaning was very clear.

I ignored it anyway. I brought my hand straight back. He was smooth and perfect to touch, white and pliant. He gave a sigh or some other noise as I brushed my thumb over his lips, but he didn’t try anything else to remove me. I could tell he wasn’t sure how to. Push me away again? I’d simply ignore him again. His bewildered, smoldering expression was both sweet and familiar, but I did not allow myself to smile. That would have been too much like taunting him.

“Oh my poor child,” I said. “I’ve done it all wrong. I’ve done everything all wrong. You’re a delicate creature, like a fawn or an orchid. I have to handle you gently.”

Louis blinked. He seemed to sift through several complex expressions before he spoke.

“Stop fondling me,” he said, at last. “It’s inappropriate.”

“Louis,” I said. “Stop flinching. It’s 2010. In some states two men can even get married.”

“That isn’t the point. And besides, this is not one of those states.”

I wondered fleetingly if that was why he had moved here. “Why don’t you marry me? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“It would be in diametric opposition to ‘fun’,” he said, sharply, shoving my hand away with sudden force. This done, he sat rigid and fuming, his cheeks flushed again, filling the air with that delicious scent. I was untroubled by his show of rejection. I recognized it for what it was. A show. And what it was, in point of fact, was entrancing.

“What about the wedding night?” I said, quietly.

He blushed in earnest. Yes, delicious scent. Utterly delicious expression. “Stop that right now.”

“Stop what?”

“You know what,” he said. “This is a public place.”

“And?” I’d asked him, reaching out again, pushing his hair back, curling my hand behind his ear. The heat in his skin was exquisite. He was furious. Or at least, he wanted me to understand that he was furious, whether or not he was, and that was thrilling. Lies or truth, I didn’t know. But it brought my heart to my throat and my own blood against my skin. God, how had I ever lived without him for so long? 

“Louis…” I said, having absolutely nothing to say besides his name.

“Take your hands off me.” His voice low and rough, his lips parting, a careful glimpse of fang. I felt my own pressing against the inside of my mouth, as if they were begging for use. My voice was low too. Low enough that nobody but he could have heard it. And I told the truth to him. Far more easily than I'd usually have told it. It matched the truth I could smell in his skin. “I might," I said. "If I thought you wanted that.”

Louis gave a slight exhalation that perhaps he had intended to mask. There was blood in his lips. Blood enough that they were almost pink. How truly lovely that was. More lovely because of what it revealed to me: that whatever he thought he was saying about it, somewhere beneath all of these protestations and petty arguments, behind the curtain, was the absolute promise of more fucking.

I know it was because of that promise that I was able to ignore his request with such impunity. I kissed him. Quickly yet languidly, long and deep, and in full view of every other patron in the bar. He jumped at it. And then he gave into it. For a moment his response was little short of religious ecstasy. I let myself enjoy his surrender for as long as I thought I could get away with it. Then, I pulled away from him before he had a chance to recall himself.

I knew what a glorious insult that was. Not only my kissing him, but my ending it before he had a chance to resist me. I could see it in him. His cheeks were blazing, and his eyes, dark and vivid, seemed to flicker between fury and some strange intoxicating softness. His had mouth remained slackly open, the points of his fangs just visible. Oh, he was angry. Or he would be when he came out of his daze. And he was beautiful. Everything about him now, bereft of control, was beautiful. I hated to stir him.

Well. I also looked forward to it. “Louis?” I grinned, and it seemed to bring him back to himself. He looked up.

“Really?” he demanded. “This is really what you’re going to do to me? Now?”

“Oh, you’ve forgiven me.”

I don’t know what I really saw in him them. What I thought he wore was his faded, beguilingly familiar expression of awed incredulity, an expression so dear to me that I temporarily wondered if we had actually traveled in time. He did not, however, speak. Whether through shock or through fury it was clear that whatever he wanted to say to me could not be forced into something so simple as language.

“You should marry me,” I said, adjusting my glasses. “I said that as a joke but now I think I’m serious. Why don’t we get married?”

“Oh mon dieu,” Louis said. “You won’t listen to me anyway. Do as you please.”

“I can’t, I need your consent.”

“Well, you don’t have it. And you never will.”

“But we’ll be together forever if we do.”

“I think you’re confused,” he said. He didn’t look at me when he did, rather he artfully raised his glass to his lips in performance of drinking from it, just as a human man might have steadied himself. “That’s not marriage, that is purgatory.”

I laughed. “What’s the difference?”

He said nothing to this either. The glass had been returned to the table, his body slipped tenderly back into its cultured, comfortable precision.

“Then again, perhaps it’s more fun, living in sin,” I said. “If it were sin, which it isn’t.”

And now, apparently, he was unflappable. I’d blown my hand kissing him. I couldn’t shock him any further than that.

“As you say,” he said. “I’m not sure we could marry. God himself might object.”

“Oh whatever, Monsieur dramatique.”

“I mean it,” Louis said. “I see your homosexual marriage. And I will refrain from voicing my opinion on that. However, I will raise you modern divorce rates in refutation of your naïve assumption that marriage is somehow inherently permanent. Take this as example - your understanding of inherence is flawed in general.”

“Catholics can’t get divorced, Louis. We mate for life, like pigeons or French angelfish.”

“I refer you,” he said, “to my earlier comment on the subject of purgatory.”

I laughed again. He may have smiled. It was impossible to be certain. The new band was starting, and the lights had changed in the bar, and they had done so in his favor. His movements were subtle enough that I couldn’t tell what else I imagined. Perhaps I imagined him totally, looking around, registering, I didn’t doubt, just how many people there were in this place. How hot and delicious they all were, how tempting the scent of their secret blood. I knew, if he were real at all, that he noticed that. The faded heat in his skin when we’d kissed was such that he’d probably fed some hours before coming here, but that wouldn’t help him much now, not before the relentless engine of his new powers. Nor would it keep him warm for long, since I had unashamedly, and quite deliberately, brought his blood-lust to the surface for my own pleasure. And would again.

“Pick someone,” I said. “Let’s. I want to do that with you. Now. Tonight.”

“No,” Louis said. Firmness there. Such familiar firmness.

“You still prefer to do it randomly, I suppose?”

“Yes, of course I do. Anything else is too mercenary. We’re not here to play with them.”

“Too mercenary for a vampire?” I scoffed. “Louis, mon cher, I had forgotten just how terrible you are at this.”

“Are you dim-witted, or just reckless? We can’t feed here without drawing attention to ourselves. Even a little drink in this place would be imprudent.”

“Pick and follow then,” I said. “After. I’ll compromise. Let’s see who leaves. You can’t drink without killing anyway.”

“I can,” he said.

This was news to me. “You didn’t on Thursday.”

“Excuse me?” Louis snapped.

“When did you learn that?” I demanded, as if it were my right to be petulant. In truth, I was a little frightened. His voice had been sharp. Subtly monstrous. That was familiar too.

“I’m better at it since your… intervention,” he said. ‘That shouldn’t surprise you.”

You’re a lot of things since my intervention, I thought. I didn’t like that feeling any more than I had my brief, sickening, sudden nostalgia at his tone. He was still looking at me, not so much angrily as predatorily, as if he’d yet to extract himself from his hunter’s preparations, but I couldn’t tell what he really felt, and I wondered just how much of what had happened between us in the last month would have happened without that forced advancement. I wondered if David had ever asked himself the same thing. If maybe that had been what had driven them away from each other. I even missed David too, for that short moment.

But I said nothing. Nothing of importance. Only, “no.”

Louis picked up his drink again. He was good at this part of it, I remember noticing. Sometimes better than I was. These subtle habits by which he protected himself were so ingrained as to seem natural. When he put the glass down, his expression had changed, his gentility recovered.

Well. Mostly recovered. His eyes had not quite come back from their ferocious expression. Even alive he’d been built of this - relentless incisiveness and overwhelming nihilism, as if he could collapse the world merely by living in it. That monster seemed to shimmer at the corner of Louis' presence just as he had always done, and no amount of bourbon or gentility could scare him away from us. I don't believe in you, I could have said. And yet, somehow you are still here.

“I didn’t mean…” I started to say. Precisely what I didn’t mean I can’t be sure of now.

“You never do,” he said.  
  
The crispness and arrogance of his voice was like a slap with a dueling glove. So what would I have said back to him? In transcription, in my memory, the slight is too great for words, and I do not know. Oh, Judy Blume, what should I have said, what could I have said, what would I have said to Louis?  
  
I'll tell you what I do know. I know that for full seconds I did nothing but stare at him through a blank wall of insult, sifting through that ringing whiteness for some kind of spoken literacy. That I remember. That and the fact that he stared right back at me, and that I knew the expression he made. I would know it beyond death; we were in open combat now. As if we'd ever been in anything else. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to flay him or to fuck him, but I know I wanted to do something.

I also recall that I was ultimately unsuccessful in my search for an appropriately devastating response. By the time I’d started to say something, we were interrupted. I’d actually forgotten, I think, in this confrontation with Louis, that there were other people here. People I’d intended to see, people I knew, a second, complimentary performance to the one on stage. My own band had returned from the courtyard, and the second act was beginning. Jimmy had sat down at the table almost silently, Delford carelessly, and Shanti with something not quite decorum and not quite panache, and I saw Louis look at them. I didn’t know if he looked as a vampire or as a person.

“Frankie,” Delford said, with characteristic tact. “You’re repulsive. Stop feeling up stray goths and talk about something interesting. It’s the least you can do after not packing up your own fucking gear.”

“Fuck you, Delford,” I said.  
Louis smiled at me.

I watched this for moments before realizing that it was unusual. Whether he was amused by me, or sick of me, or judged me in some other way, he was unreadable. It was not a comfortable smile.

“This is…” I said, but then what? I knew what I wanted to say, but his expression stopped me. I thought that on some subtle level, he was daring me. Call me your lover then, he was telling me. Go on. See what I’ll do. I chickened out. “This is Louis.”

He put out his hand and Delford took it. At that bizarre contact, that truly bizarre rupturing contact of Louis’ white hand with Delford’s pink one, I understood this life exactly as it was. As desperate mirage. As a stop-gap between emptiness and him. I adjusted the false glasses once more. I’m not sure why I did that. I suppose, looking at something so damned confusing, so damned awkward, so damned probably-ironic, I may actually have needed them to see.


	11. The Difficult Second Album (part three)

The Difficult Second Album (part three)

I should have anticipated it, I know. These powers are not new to me. Telepathy, or whatever you call it - I have it, I’ve had it forever, so I should have been prepared for suddenly, violently having to see through a narrow human consciousness. But I had been distracted and thoughtless because of Louis, and I had not. The band had sat down, and it had happened without warning.

Since we’re being so frank with each other, you and I, I may as well admit that I’d rather not tell you about that part of it. I’d rather not confess that at the moment of contact between Louis and I and our fleshy, companionable prey at the table in Retroville, where the smoke hung low and the darkness close to us, I slid abruptly, nauseously, out of my own body and into placelessness. I don’t want to tell you that, for obvious reasons. But it did happen. Only for moments, harsh at first, and then intermittent. Long enough for me to feel it.

I think you knew about that already, though, didn’t you? You’ve already figured out that what you _think_ something means, and what it actually turns out to mean for you are not always the same. Even your meager, human eyes ought to be able to see a metaphor when it is dangled in front of you. I’ve got these false glasses for an accessory, sure, but even that ought to tell you something about the tale I’m relating. Doesn’t it? Oh, now, _really._ Have you forgotten about _Forever…_ already? Don’t you remember that I told you that you should never say it?

Well, the supplementary lesson is this: don’t believe in it either. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you. The world is full of liars who never mean to lie, take my advice on that. Be wary. Be warier than you are. Particularly, up until now, you have been imagining Louis on my description, and that, my dear, was more foolish of you than you know. Oh, I didn’t describe him the way I have out of any duplicity - unlike everything else I’ve told you here, no part of me intended any espionage or equivocation in _that_ detail. I just didn’t think to tell you we saw differently. I don’t blame myself for this mistake; I cannot be thinking of you all of the time.

So be grateful I’m thinking of it now. This confession is more important for you to hear than it may be for me to give, you know. I only tell you because I have promised you truth or at least some semblance of it. And I don’t always give such benevolent advice. I’m only doing it as a favor to Judy. So you’ll be grateful.

It’s for her that I’ll paint it clearer. It’s for her, and for you, that I want to show you what all of this really means in plain terms, or plain implication. Think on this, for example: Louis is white. He’s whiter than white. Use any metaphor you want to – several of those I’ve used so far would work in this context, alabaster, porcelain – but the point of these descriptions is that when I call him white, when I say this to you, I do mean the actual color. Louis is white, and to me this has always been beautiful. To me there are shades and blushes, difference in his skin. Texture. But for Delford, and Shanti, and Jimmy, for you, even with your vantage-point of literary distance, it wouldn’t be so. He shook their hands, seeming to pause at Shanti’s before she shook his and he was clearly reminded that women shook hands now, and they saw only his shimmering pallor. They saw that he moved like a black-and-white movie. Like an alluring horror show. Everything about him they saw, and they should have found dangerous.

And yet they did not.

Of course they did not. They were, the band were, as you would be, as my false glasses should indicate, so easily reassured by illusion that they accepted Louis’ presence without suspicion and without fear. Oh, they saw him as strange. They even saw him as _exactly as strange as he actually was_. And yet, it is possible, as a result of your inventiveness, to receive such strange strangeness as familiar - as Delford put it, to see Louis as a “stray Goth”. And so they did. And so they always do. We say forever to you, and you believe us!

Oh, you would have too, if you’d been with us. Don’t protest, it’s needless. You’ve always accepted semblance. Thus far, you’ve accepted my declarations of love and honesty, and you’ll accept fake glasses and fake Goths and fake demons too, trust me on that. You’d have slipped into your seat and seen Robert Smith in updated clothing, or one of the members of Bauhaus. You would have. You don’t see as I see, in any of the ways that matter. I know that. And I remember it now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.

You’ll forgive me, though. It’s not only telepathy that begs I remember how you see. I remember it already, from my own youth. Don’t you remember? I told you about this already. I thought I saw significance everywhere, but none of the real stuff was in the places I thought it would be. And I do love you for it, your faulty vision, your gentle trust, your tender pretended embrace, just as I loved them. Without those qualities, I doubt we’d speak to each other at all. I doubt I’d feed so romantically or give such pleasure, or terror to those I killed. We kiss in illusion, my love. In our blessed communion, forever and ever, as it is, and was, and ever shall be, illusion, performance and constancy. Forever. There’s an innocence to being disabused of that, an innocence I never deserved.

I didn’t deserve it here either. Here, where forever, or suddenly, Louis, or something, someone I didn’t know, was speaking, and it made me sick to concentrate. In this distortion, speech was momentarily impossible. I could speak in my head, hear my own voice in my head, but it seemed a universe unto itself, a void in which I floated before I was able to anchor myself back into my own eyes. Seeing him as an illusion, one I accepted - I have no idea how long that lasted. It can’t have been terribly long. Louis was still speaking. Look at him properly.

“It’s my pleasure,” he said. He paused. “Of course, I remember so little of the nineteen eighties.”

“Let us bring them alive for you.” Delford had answered him. Sarcastically. Louis smiled. Not malevolently. Conversationally. He’d understood the tone, he could read the situation. I thought I could read his face. These glasses may be help or hindrance. Adjust them. The plastic felt cold to me, probably because my face was cold beneath it.

“You haven’t considered a version of one of Robert Palmer’s songs?” Louis said, gesturing to the room. “It hadn’t occurred to me that reinterpretations of popular songs could be interesting, but I think they are. There’s a certain amount of historical comment, isn’t there? That was quite genuinely the most menacing version of ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ I’ve ever heard, for example.”

He looked at me when he spoke. That had been my composition, and I think he knew it. I was sure then that I must have been hearing aloud, because I wanted to know what had given me away, and Louis’ thoughts were, as ever, illegible to me. Having adjusted my glasses, I laid my hand on the table. It felt wrong there. Useless.

“I wanted to do Robert Palmer,” Shanti said. “These guys wouldn’t let me. The only way it could work is if I sang it and they stood at the back like automatons and kind of danced. You know. Like the videos.”

Delford snorted. “If I wanted to join an art band I’d have... joined an art band.”

“Why not?” Jimmy said, quietly. “I said I’d do it.” Yes, quietly. Yes, that’s right, Lestat, you’re listening, and not seeing. You know about genre.

“You are in an art band,” Shanti told Delford. “Like, did you somehow reason that this was not an art band? Only doing eighties covers and only doing them “differently” kind of makes us an art band.”

“Yeah, but this is just… it’s too smug. Robert Palmer brings out my inner Patrick Bateman, you know, and it’s just so _knowing_. Enjoy this fine song and TRY GETTING A RESERVATION AT DORSIA NOW, YOU FUCKING STUPID BASTARD.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, exactly.”

“ _Death Proof_ ,” Jimmy nodded. I didn’t understand the reference. Then I did. The title of a film. Blink again. There’s a light from the stage. It’s distracting me. When it touches my hand, it seems alien.

“Yeah,” Shanti said. “A détournement of the violence in the original. I think it’d be great. I’ll be sad about not doing the drums if it’s ‘Simply Irresistable’, but it’ll be worth it.”

Louis looked, I thought, interested. I knew this because he moved slightly, and I had to look at him. What a face he had for looking interested. His most lively, and second most beautiful expression. I didn’t know the broader application of the word détournement then. Normally I would have understood it simply by hearing Shanti think when she said it, as I’d understood about the film, but my vision was too confusing for the verbal underlay to come comprehensible enough. Later, with his arm around me, his hand tangled up in my curls, Louis would explain. A repurposing of something well understood into something ludicrous and not understandable. Revealing the original message, thus supplanting it with a new one.

How very poignant it was then, for Shanti to say it, exactly that word. I used it earlier if you recall, because I know it now. Détournement! The sort of thing I couldn’t make up! “I didn’t know it was art, the band,” Louis would say, after his explanation. I saw myself kissing him again, as if we were alone in my bed and not surrounded by all of this. His other arm came up around me, and the dog curled against my back, my family had enclosed me. And “I apologize for that,” he said. “I should have anticipated.”

Oh yes, he has his own failures at anticipation. I would have used that as ammunition, I’m sure. But I didn’t know he’d admit that then. That argument, that movement of his arm, that whisper, it was hours away. Here and now, I had no idea it was coming. I’d been fighting my way back to presence, clawing for some semblance or some indication of normalcy, whatever that could have been under circumstances like these. Blink, and the band were quarry again, three soft pillows of nourishing blood. Blink again, and I was one with them, looking at Louis as if he were an attractive unknown, something just this side of the fashionable uncanny. Something about the hot room and the sprawling crush of bodies reminded me powerfully of the old quadroon balls, of how he’d looked then, of how fresh and how easy my baiting of his instincts had been, how I’d pressed up against his body while he pretended to resist me. Unfortunately, as I temporarily found myself a barely contained miasma of panic and artlessness, the fact of my own body’s, and my own lover’s body’s painful détournement was left unremarked upon.

As it was, Louis attempted that remark, I think, though it lacked the metatextuality I might have employed. “Using the machinery against itself,” he said, as if it were relevant. It was relevant. I could tell it was relevant. I could speak there if I could only see clearly. If I could only see anything besides the lie we were. I bowed my head, closing my eyes. Either out of desperation, or some perverse attempt to recover my less preternatural powers, I slipped my useless hand into the back pocket of Louis’ suit pants.

That worked a little. I hadn’t exactly expected it to, but it had. Louis seemed to freeze, but he did not correct me, and that was what worked about it. For Louis, my Louis, to move would be to acknowledge my touch before the group, and the fact that he would not was groundingly, reassuringly familiar. I saw the faintest glimmer of fury in his green eyes, covered over carefully, yet still visible to me, and that I recognized. That was enough that I knew who I pretended to be. All the better to call together the floating pieces of my Francis performance. And I swallowed. And I spoke.

“We wouldn’t be the first,” I said. The physical reality of Louis’ ass under my hand, that was familiar to me too, and though I could not exactly place the memory (how might I have chosen from so many?) “You’ve heard the Kisses cover of ‘Johnny and Mary’? They’ve managed to transform a Robert Palmer song into lackluster Zevon. I’m not sure they should have bothered.”

Delford frowned. “I hate that hipster shit, man. I’m already compromising. If we do Palmer, I want to do rock Palmer or no Palmer at all. And if you won’t do drums for it, Shanti, then I want you to teach me.”

I privately agreed, though publicly appeared to consider the point. But Shanti had not re-entered the conversation, and it gave me pause. Louis’ ass. The lining of Louis’ suit pants pocket. Firm, satiny. Just you concentrate on that, Lestat. Don’t loose your cool.

“What is it?”

“Don’t make me pack up your shit, okay Frankie? I’m not your mom.”

I kept my hand where it was, but the flicker on Louis’ face had made me want to pinch him. Imagine if I had? I wonder if he’d have slapped me. I wish I’d done it so we’d know for sure. But my own face I kept level. Ordinarily I could do that in my sleep by now, but at this moment even that minor action was complicated. I was tired. I didn’t want to be reasonable. I wanted to sulk. Oh, for fuck’s sake, I miss Satan’s Night Out, I might have said. But only Louis would understand what I meant by that, and I wasn’t about to give him any more satisfaction.

No time for nostalgia anyway. “Look at his cute face,” Delford laughed. “See how confused he is? He didn’t know that people with less money than him aren’t automatically his servants.”

“Shut up, Delford,” Jimmy told him, though he smiled a little. “You’re not helping. Shanti’s right, this is a thing.”

“We don’t work for you,” Shanti said. “If I’m going to work for you, then you can pay me.”

“I could pay you,” I said.

Shanti looked at me. She continued looking at me. And then she started to laugh in chorus with Delford. “You’re such an entitled douche!” she said. “I can’t believe it. You would too, wouldn’t you?”

“You don’t find it endearing?” I said, teasingly, and for a moment I was tempted to say it in a way that I knew she would have to agree with. Shading it with persuasion. Putting her in danger. But Louis’ presence stopped me. I knew what he’d think if I did. It was possible he’d even say it, I could see that on his face. So instead I said, “with entitlement comes a certain devil-may-care, and I know you like that.”

“No,” she said. She was still laughing, though it seemed as if she were trying to stop. Jimmy too had put a hand over his mouth in a manner that reminded me of Louis. “I emphatically do not.”

I said, “okay.”

“Do you really mean that?”

Jimmy was looking at me again. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, man,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be huge. Just, you know, pack your own gear. Or ask, I guess. I would do it if you asked.”

“Okay.”

“Say, ‘I won’t do it again, Shanti, I promise’.”

“I won’t do it again, Shanti, I promise. Do you want me to pinkie-swear?”

“I’ll forgive you,” she said. “But if you make me do it again you can explain to the bar what it’s still doing there.”

“Okay,” I said. I grinned now, even though I didn’t want to. Perhaps I did want to. Perhaps it was easier that there were several layers of falsehood now. Every layer made it better, made me more artful. “Let me make it up to you. Let me buy you a drink.”

“You better buy us a drink,” she said. “I’ll take whatever your friend is drinking. Smells like bourbon.”

“It is bourbon,” Louis said. What the fuck was happening on _his_ face? This undertow of amusement was well out of step with what I required of him. I didn’t pinch him then either, but I sorely wanted to.

“Good?” Shanti asked him.

“It’s fine.”

“Are you going to light that fucking cigarette, Frankie?” Delford said.

“I’ll light it for you, “Frankie”,” Louis said. “Here.”

Cunt. I couldn’t refuse the light either. I was, after all, holding it like a smoker, though I’d completely forgotten I was. Louis raised the candle, again, and I inhaled, again. I had to remove my hand from his pocket to lean into it. I wondered if that had been his design.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Jimmy said. He’d taken out his own pack, and Shanti had taken one. She took it with an assumed familiarity, much as I had done with Louis’. There was meaning in that gesture, I realized. I could almost smell it on them, even without my additional knowledge.

“I just started,” I replied. “Perhaps I’ll keep it up.”

“It’s getting expensive,” Shanti said. She lit up. “That’s a good reason to stay not started. Not like that matters to you, though.”

Adjusting the glasses had become habit by now, and I did that pompously but theatrically, instead of speaking in response. The gesture was utterly hollow, though I doubt anyone but me noticed this. Shanti received the movement in the manner in which it was intended, and Louis did nothing but watch me. His eyes gleamed, and his presence shivered. How I hated him for that. His very nearness had reduced me to a pool of inarticulateness and shameful childishness and the only thing I wanted to do was to crawl under his clothes and lick him until I was sure of his real existence, but he wouldn’t move, or speak to me. Of course he wouldn’t. That was familiar, of course, but it was still infuriating.

And I had such stupid work to do! A post-mortem of our own gig, criticism of the following bands, the intricacies of fronting human. All of that was necessary work, though at that moment I couldn’t remember why I’d bothered to set it for myself. I’m not human! I thought. I never was! If he wouldn’t move, then I’d lay waste to the bar. He’d have to fight me on that. He’d move then. The two of us would devastate everything.

“Where’s left that you can even smoke?” Delford had his own packet, which he upended and flicked with his finger until a cigarette fell out of it and onto the table. He looked at it for a moment before picking it up. “Here. That other bar. Waffle House.”

“IHOP,” said Jimmy.

“Oh yeah, IHOP.”

“Why now, Frankie?”

“Could I just do one thing without this running commentary?” I snapped, exactly as petulantly as it probably sounds. Louis’ mouth jerked upwards again before settling back into repose. Cunt. Cunt. Cunt. If he wouldn’t move, then I would. I would!

But I did not. I wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. I couldn’t move if I couldn’t see properly! “Drinks,” I said, plastering it on again. Francis. My best, and most charming grin, as Francis. I swear, the movement of my face must have been audible in its strain and labor. “This party needs drinks.”

“Francis,” said Louis. “Let me.”

His expression may or may not have been sympathetic. It was hard, if not impossible, to tell. He seemed even, flat, and not particularly committed either way. But his voice had been quiet, as if he spoke to me only, and I grasped at that.

“You don’t mind?” I said.

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Take my wallet.”

“I have money,” he said. “Consider it a recompense for all of this… entertainment.”

“Fuck you, Louis,” I said, but there wasn’t much fire in it. He smiled. Then he got up. And then he left. I could not differentiate his movements, and his going seemed to tear a hole in space itself. But I had no time to collect myself before I was required to account for his presence in human terms.

“Um, Francis… is this your boyfriend?” Delford asked me. He spoke in an ingratiating voice, hunching his shoulders a little. Ordinarily, it would have thrilled me. Delford is round-faced and young looking and exceptionally good at cute-but-biting. Ordinarily I’d probably have put my hand on his thigh, or pulled him into my arms affectionately as reward for this charming performance, but at this moment I merely found him overwhelmingly tiresome. I did not respond. “Franciiiis,” he said, again, lilting his voice.

“Shut the fuck up, Delford,” Jimmy said. Had he noticed my lack of reaction? He’d lit his cigarette too and was looking at the band on stage. His tone was matter of fact rather than angry. “You’re such a dick tonight, man. It’s not funny.” Yes, he had noticed. A kindness to me on Jimmy’s part. And a warning: your persona is slipping. It was a kindness that neither I, nor any correct presentation of Francis could accept. I brought my daring forward again.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s wildly romantic and devastatingly sexual. Don’t be jealous, darling.”

Delford ginned. Sucking on his cigarette, he plucked at the black and white scarf he wore over his usual outfit, and the foreignness he seemed to feel brought a sharp, violent lust tearing forward from the pit of my stomach and into my mouth. “I’ll pine for you every night, Frankie. Don’t break my heart,” he said, and it wasn’t his, I understood. The scarf. Someone had given the scarf to him. Someone, some young man, had draped it around his neck this evening before sending him out into the world and wishing him luck. That young man had kissed him, his soft human mouth. I could smell it in his thoughts. And I could taste all of it too, with only a little drink. I wanted to.

Though another part of me wished I had followed Delford’s example in separating my work and my home lives so carefully. That young man was, and I assumed would remain, intentionally absent from his conversation. I didn’t know Delford then in the biblical sense, so all of this was merely play, but his body was so warm, even to look at, so full of fleshy secrets. I put my arm over his shoulder and he leaned into me, shifting his hips. Blood in his lips. Richness.

Yet I kept my voice light. “Never mind, baby. We’ll keep something going on the side.”

“I’m so glad I called in tonight,” he cracked, meaning that he had probably lied to somebody to avoid working a shift at the Hillcrest Road Krispy Kreme. “Getting felt up by you is so much better than eating glazed donuts.”

Shanti laughed again. At Delford more than me, I think. “For how long is this boyfriend?” she asked me.

“For forever,” I said, sighing dramatically. “At least that’s how it feels to me.”

“It can be like that sometimes,” Jimmy said. He had turned back to the table now. I think the new band had failed to interest him. “But I think you know, you know? You know if they’re somebody. I guess you work.”

My God, but Jimmy was gentle. Why hadn’t I slept with him? I’d had the chance once, but it had seemed improper.

“Good looking,” Shanti said. “Like, seriously good looking. That Goth thing is… yeah, it’s good on him.”

Jimmy smiled at this. He looked askance at her, saying, “uh, thanks.” To me, he said, “good for you, man.”

His eyes were soft when he spoke. I was somebody young to him, somebody something like five years his junior. I wasn’t offended by that knowledge. It meant I’d done Francis right, and that Jimmy couldn’t help being genuine towards him any more than I could help being a liar in making him.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling, rolling my eyes, curling my fingers in Delford’s shaggy hair. Oh, I couldn’t _respond_ to that kind of genuineness, even if I appreciated it. Jimmy smiled back at me and tilted his head slightly. Almost as if he were saying, oh well.

I had to look away when he did that. I’m not sure he noticed. I didn’t know why at the time, though I do now, I think, given the benefit of reflection. I think, for a moment, for just a short moment, Jimmy’s genuineness seemed to chafe with his clothing, and I resented that more than I should have. He wore what he always wore – like Delford, he has an outfit of choice that he never varies - a black t-shirt with the arms rolled up, tight black jeans, his hair in a touchably messy quiff. But for just that moment, the knowledge that I’d never seen him in anything else unsettled me.

No, that isn’t quite right. It _angered_ me. How could he mean what he said to me when so much effort had gone into his presentation?

“Hmpf,” I said.

“Frankie?” Delford asked me, “do you have relationship problems?”

For a split second, my fingers froze in Delford’s hair. For a split second, I saw myself grabbing it at the nape of his neck as if a kitten’s scruff, saw myself wrenching his throat toward me and tearing it open. Then, though my heart did not seem to beat, my fingers moved again. He wouldn’t even see the threat in my actions, in my raised eyebrows, my careful appreciation of the dry cigarette. He wouldn’t know what I imagined myself doing. My mouth tasted a little unpleasant anyway.

“No,” I said. “What do you think this is? Doctor Phil?”

Delford smirked at me. Violence. Push it down. Shanti, in purple lipstick and pale denim jacket, also kept to variations on a theme, I noticed. Her bangs were heavy and blunt, and it suited her. So did her shredded tights and the white suede boots they were tucked into, so did Jimmy’s display of his thin, muscled arms, so did Delford’s soft, innocent face and the bitter expressions he turned it to. Everything is performance, I told myself. Performance _is_ constancy. Just you remember that, Francis. Maybe it isn’t a lie to say forever?

“It did seem heated,” said Shanti. Jimmy looked at her. “I mean, I think we were all a little aware that whatever was happening between you guys seemed heated. Let’s just have that out in the open.”

I butted the cigarette out, in the ashtray this time, separating myself from that ritual. I’d smoked enough, there seemed no good reason to keep up with it. Delford had leaned forward again, and I removed my arm from his shoulder, though I toussled his hair before letting him leave me. I held myself back from cuffing him.

“Shanti…” Jimmy started to say. I couldn’t have that either.

“You’re high,” I said. “It’s fine. Louis is fine.”

“A man’s business is his own, you guys.” Delford. Delford saying something rude and deliberate. Pay attention. Cuff him then. That’s what he expects. But lightly. Very lightly. He’s not Louis. He’ll break. “Whose scarf is that?”

“My scarf,” he said. “It’s called a keffiyeh.”

I felt a flash of anger from Shanti at that word, though I didn’t know why. She rolled her eyes but the feeling was gone quickly, and she elected not to say anything.

“Did anyone notice that these guys fucking suck,” Delford had said. “They always suck. I feel cheapened by the fact that they always play after us.”

Jimmy agreed. “Yeah, I mean… I don’t know, they’re not the worst in the world, but it’s just… not very interesting.”

“The Cars were a good choice I thought,” Shanti said. “Though… well, yeah.”

Jimmy had put his hand in hers, I noticed. Interesting. They’d linked fingers and were watching the band on stage. That contact, skin on skin, was still thrilling to them. It hurt my heart a little, feeling that from both of them. I remembered being with Nicki, watching a performance with Nicki - every member of every band in existence does this, you know, this judging, this comparative evaluation. Every musician, probably. And Nicki had done it with me, holding my hand, while we’d whispered into each other’s ears, each trying to make the other laugh uncontrollably. I remember that even now, and I remembered it then in a way that was momentarily overwhelming. Someone had probably felt that from us just as I felt it from them. That I’d thought I would love him forever. Touch the glasses again.

But I can’t remember if I spoke or I didn’t. Probably I did. Louis had returned, so perhaps I was distracted, but would have been easier for me by then, saying something quick and amusingly nasty for the general pleasure of the band. Whatever comment I made is lost to my memory now, but isn’t that interesting? Everything about my performance was relevant to me but my spoken thoughts on the art itself. The drinks were put on the table, not by Louis but by one of the young men from the bar. A beard. Ginger. See his throat. And I would have said something. Oh, but performance is constancy.

As I watched, Louis had sat down again, silent and perfect. The band had acknowledged him, and had thanked him, but they did not stop talking. Louis passed me one of the glasses, and I washed a sip of bourbon around my mouth before carefully, unnoticeably, spitting it back. It felt like poison, but it was better than the taste of the stale smoke. At least it hurt. At least it stung. Delford had lacerated the new band and had moved on to our future song choices. “… ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’? Yeah, but it’s like… you can’t just try to _be_ The Cars when you cover them because then you’re just Weezer. I do not want to be Weezer, Jimmy.” And I had nothing to say.

“Weezer is ok,” Jimmy said. “But, that’s like… that’s not… really relevant.”

Yes dear, I thought but did not say, but that presumes that anything about this hollow facade is relevant in the first instance. I wouldn’t say that to Jimmy, but I wanted to. I wanted to hurt him a little by saying it. It wasn’t his fault that everything made me tired any more than it is yours, but I wanted to. And what in the hell would Louis think of this? I wondered. I was used to their patois. I’m used to patois in general. I know how to talk to people. And I know that Weezer is a band. Louis doesn’t, though presumably the name would make sense to him in context.

I stole another glance at him, but he seemed unfazed, calmly anchored in time and space, hands on the table, still. I think he was looking at Shanti’s mouth. Either because of her purple lipstick or because he found the shape of her curved human lips attractive. “I like _Pinkerton_ ,” she was saying. Human things, as if her human life would continue. As if any of that mattered now that Louis was here.

Delford disagreed. “ _Pinkerton_ sucks.”

“ _Pinkerton_ is pretty good,” Jimmy concluded, as if it were, as he had previously suggested, irrelevant. But final. “But okay, what I want… like, I want to show the audience what I liked about the song. You know, when I was listening to it. And I want the handclaps because, you know, I loved the handclaps and the handclaps are fun so it’s like, I want to be, ‘here you guys, here’s a fun song.’ You know?”

Shanti drew on her cigarette thoughtfully. Both Louis and I watched that. A new cigarette? Had enough time passed that she had lit a second? Probably not - the cigarette was almost gone. Her lipstick was shiny and it had stained the filter a little. I saw that concurrently with Louis’ stillness. I wished I knew what he was thinking.

“‘Roam’,” Shanti said. “Um, ‘Darlington County’? On _Born in the USA._ I mean, maybe we could have more of those songs? If that’s what bothers you. Because I like the percussive stuff. It’s dorky, but don’t you think it’s kind of cool because it’s dorky? I saw another band do it once, like, body percussion, a body percussion piece before they got on stage. And it’s kind of good because you know they’re uncomfortable, and then you feel uncomfortable, and then you’re like, ‘oh. This is _uncomfortable’_.”

“Nah nah.” Jimmy’s disagreement was contemplative rather than forceful. “No it’s like… your player, and you don’t have albums in there. Don’t you think it should, like, jar? Like, that the song is wholly… you’ve switched tracks now, like we’re skipping through culture. I don’t know. It’s not the biggest deal in the world. That’s just kind of how I see it, but I think it could be good.”

“Who doesn’t have albums?” Delford. That was Delford. Look at him, stop staring at Louis. “I have albums.”

“I have albums too,” Jimmy said. “But not on my ipod. On my ipod, I have songs.”

“Do you ever notice this?” said Shanti, with an air of having her own conversation. I looked at her again now. Beautiful movements. “ _Raditude_ is… okay, _Raditude_ is pretty awful, I’ll let you have that,” she continued, and I snapped back into things. “And _Hurley_ is… I don’t know, not really that good either. But I like the Blue album and some of the Green too... and I can’t make up my mind whether or not the lyrics are stupid, or jerky, or if they’re trying to talk about that, and that kind of makes me interested. Listening to Weezer is like being friends with someone you’re pretty sure would be a creepy boyfriend. That’s interesting.”

“‘Across the Sea’,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, pretty much exactly.”

Delford snorted. “No. Just no. I mean, if you’re going to write ‘woe is me, I’m a bad man’ songs you need to write about actually being a bad man. No more fucking Weezer in this conversation. We are an eighties covers band, and we will cover The Cars – a band from the eighties…”

“Seventies.”

“ _Eighties_. With honor and dignity. And a minimum of Weezerishness.”

“I don’t know,” Shanti said. “It is interesting, don’t you think? About fame especially, I really think that’s interesting. Like, people are just throwing themselves at you and it’s not like you suddenly have no sex drive. So what do you do about it?”

“Not do it? Or become Slash, I guess, but either way I don’t want to hear about it. Back me up on this, Frankie.”

“I’d have become Slash,” I said.

Delford frowned and Louis’ face flickered again. I thought I recognized it this time. Without an audience I suspected he would have laughed openly. Though I couldn’t be sure.

Shanti ignored me. “This is so bullshit with you, Delford. Everyone you like is this whiney-ass alt guy, and you suddenly have this problem with Weezer? Is it perchance because Pitchfork gave the re-release of _Pinkerton_ a perfect ten and now you need to establish some hipster cred by not liking it?”

“I don’t read Pitchfork.”  
“You’re such a liar! You are just… _such_ a liar.”

“Seriously,” Delford had said. “Is this one of those ‘no true reading of the text’ things? Because, no. Rivers Cuomo can only write one boring song, and he writes it over and over again, and it sucks. Some stuff is _actually bad_ , despite what you learned at your fucking liberal arts love-in in California. Weezer just fucking suck. Maybe I will accept ‘Pink Triangle’ because that’s kind of a fun song but even then, I just really want to hit him in the face. God, _it’s so hard to be a white boy and why don’t lesbians love me_?”

Delford was doing an impression. His voice had gone up an octave and he’d underscored it with a lopsided, narrow-eyed grin and a cock of his head. It took me a moment to understand that it was an impression of Shanti. Her understanding, however, was instant. She hit his shoulder with her palm. Louis’ face flickered again. This time it was unmistakeable. He really did find this funny, I realized. All of it. Everything about this was funny to him, including my participation. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss him for that or to hit him on the shoulder too.

Jimmy, meanwhile, was grinning. I understood that. The unacknowledged pleasure Shanti and Delford took in their fencing was somewhat attractive. I thought I saw the beginning of another silent laugh on Louis’ face too. I wondered, if I chanced a hand on his thigh, if it would go well for me. If I could only bring him back into my possession. For a moment, my hand wavered there, but I couldn't bring myself to do it

“Maybe I make an exception for Weezer,” Shanti said. Delford was unimpressed.

“And where was this kindness of spirit when it came to Vampire Weekend?”

“You fuckhead, that is completely different. Appropriation is a complex discussion, okay, but it is a different fucking discussion from Weezer. If you want a comparison, try Led Zepplin. Or you, with your fucking keffiyeh. Are you wearing that just to fuck me off?”

“I just like the scarf.”

“Maybe you could like things from your own fucking culture? Just if we're talking about white boys.”

“And solidarity with Palestine.”

“That sounds like you. Informed about Palestine.”

“I fucking know about Palestine.”

“Yeah, like Larry David knows about Palestine.”

Delford seemed frozen at this, and Shanti triumphant. But Jimmy snickered, shaking his head, and grinding his cigarette out. “Okay you guys,” he said. “For my own sanity I’m calling truce on the Larry David argument. Do you want to do the hand claps or not.”

“I vote yes,” said Shanti. “I vote for awesome. And you like Pitchfork, Delford. You read that review, just admit it.”

“I _liked_ Pitchfork. Before it was all self-consciously “cool”.”

“Before _you_ were all self-consciously cool.”

“If I do handclaps for you, can I also judge you for making me do them?”

“You can do whatever you want, man.” Jimmy said. “Frankie?”

But it must have taken me too long to respond, because he said it again. I only just heard him that second time. Any consciousness I had beyond Louis’ face was temporarily peripheral.

I had to wrench my attention back to them, but I did. I spoke because I had to. Because Jimmy’s questioning me at all, because their gazes, and Louis’ infuriating calm and his infuriating amusement dared me to. If he would only smile quickly, if he would only mime drinking with perfect grace, if he would only watch all this while saying nothing, then I would say something about Weezer because what the fuck else had I left to perform? I said it without thinking. I wanted to shout, but I didn’t.

“‘Across the Sea’ is interesting,” I said. Louis’ amused expression took on a subtle tint of malice.

I kept looking at him. “Weezer,” I said, “are somewhat played out, but _Pinkerton_ remains a strange and rather fascinating record. It feels cathartic, as a work. I feel it bears some similarity to _In Utero_.”

“Oh, we have an opinion from Mister Mainstream,” Delford smirked. “Do you get all of your taste from Pitchfork, or just the really boring part of it?”

Shanti smacked the table with her palm. “I knew it! You totally read that review!”

I knew I was expected to laugh in response, and I did so. It felt hollow under Louis' evaluation, but in a sense, Delford’s ignorance was genuinely funny, so I concentrated on that. “I can assure you that your tastes are _historically_ mainstream,” I said. “That’s a constant in history, the evaluation of art by abstract criteria, reducing it to soulless analysis, the production of an established list of greats. As if it were possible to dictate what a gut feeling or experience or love might be. You can’t hear the meaning in that record, and of course that means it isn’t there.”

“Uh huh. Because Rivers Cuomo and Kurt Cobain, soul twins.”

Sarcasm. Laugh again. “Handclaps,” I said. “That’s a yes vote. You’ll do them, and you’ll look adorable.

Had I threatened him? I wonder, given his reaction, if perhaps on some level I had. Because Delford didn’t laugh back at me. He seemed to retreat a little, almost imperceptibly. Then he rolled his eyes and sucked down half of his bourbon in one hit.

“I swear, hanging out with you is making my music taste worse by the fucking day,” he said, but some of the fire had gone out of it. His shoulders were hunched, and then they weren't anymore, but I saw it and wished I hadn't.

I felt my misstep powerfully. The false bitterness of the banter, the false glasses, the false familiarity, a false lover, all of this overtop of the unfortunate knowledge of who he really was, something I shouldn’t have known but unfortunately did. Because I wasn’t human, and he was. I raised my eyebrows and smirked at him, but I had to fight to retain that.

“That sort of thing is contagious,” I said, holding the smile. “When you’re close to someone, you can’t but help assimilate. Perhaps because something is revealed to you by that proximity, or perhaps only because it seems to be a part of them so it gathers shades.”

“I guess,” said Delford, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore. Under the table, Louis slipped his hand into mine.

I almost jumped when he did. He gave no indication at all that he was doing it. His expression hadn’t changed, and his movement was extremely subtle. If it hadn’t been my hand that he’d taken, I might not have noticed at all. I wanted to squeeze back, though I didn’t. He hadn’t reacted to my hand earlier, and I wouldn’t react to his now. Instead I left it there lightly, as if I hadn’t noticed it after all, and mimed drinking again.

“What the fuck is with this guy’s amp,” Delford said now, having shifted his attention away from me. Unless he hadn’t. Unless I’d spoken, unless I’d lost time again. You see, I’m sure, why I did not want to tell you about this part of it. I did not want to tell you that Louis’ hand was distracting. Too distracting. None of that I wanted to tell you, and yet it is essential that I do. What I remember is that Delford and Jimmy were still talking, but I remember it barely, as if I'd made it up or dreamed it into existence. “Ugh, it needs like… I just need a screw driver.”

“Nah man, you don’t know distortion. Listen,” said Jimmy. “Just listen to it. Ignore the song and listen to that.”

Louis was listening too, I think. He’d looked toward the stage. He’d tightened his hand too, just a little.

“I’m serious man,” Delford was saying. “Some shit is rattling in there. Part of the speaker’s come loose.”

“Who cares?”

Louis had let go of me. Please don’t! I wanted to say, but couldn’t.

“You do, don’t you?” he said, to Jimmy. Jimmy turned to him, surprised. So did I. “Why?”

He grinned. “I’m um… I’m working on something that…” Jimmy said. “I’m noise musician. Or sound artist maybe, either of those things, I guess. I’m working on amps right now.”

“I’m not familiar with either of the terms you’ve used, unfortunately,” said Louis.

Neither was I, though they filled in quickly. Jimmy’s thoughts were purely linguistic and not easy to follow, but I understood the gist. How was it that I hadn’t known this about him? Something came up in Delford’s mind too. The Dead C. A wall of noise. Shanti only had a peculiar fondness, a colorful fondness I wanted to look at more closely.

“Okay, well… okay, do you know John Cage?” Jimmy asked.

Louis did. “Of _Silence: Lectures and Writings_?”

“You’ve read that?”

“Yes.”

What the fuck? I thought. Jimmy, however, seemed pleased. “Okay, well, then like that. You know when he asks all the questions – is this music? Is that music? That’s I guess… that’s kind of where I do my work.”

Louis seemed to take this in languidly. After a while, a long while in which he did nothing but appear to reflect, he said, “as for example, to atmospheric sounds? That was of interest to me. If all sounds may be regarded as music, then how is the listener able to select? Might we be proposing a kind of… voluntary overload concerning sound?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “Yeah, that’s part of it. Sometimes. Overload. A kind of endurance, even. Like, you’re pushing the equipment for what kinds of sounds it can make when you treat it like a machine, not an instrument. The recordings I did lately were with old tapes, I pulled them through a four-track for a performance, but I recorded it. And then I was thinking, there’s this secondary layer that maybe you could introduce something, variations in the speaker you use to play it or… like a second performance. But the basic principle for me is, listen to the things you weren’t listening to.”

“I see.”

“In fairness, John Cage is pretty cool,” Delford interjected.

Shanti grinned. “Thanks Delford. We were all waiting for your opinion.”

“Argue with ‘4’33’,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

Shanti declined to argue with ‘4’33’. She liked it, I heard her think that. She was thinking about it, rather than correcting him, and I saw why. It was intriguing, the idea of a fully silent composition. I liked it too, following her thoughts. The sheet music would give no directions besides your being silent. Whatever sounds there were would be the sound of the piece. Whatever hadn’t been said would be the thing listened to. Trenchant. Louis faked drinking. After a moment, after deciding that however much I wanted to, I would not take a real one from Shanti, so did I.

“He’s good at it,” Shanti told Louis, pointing at Jimmy with her thumb. “I never knew I’d like it, I never expected that he’d pull this fucking tape out of a cassette and pull it around and I would like it. But I did like it. Watching it as a performance, you know? Like all of the parts in a really good rock song that I’d never listened to.”

This was the reward for my noble decision, I suppose. That Shanti's compliment had made Jimmy happy was apparent even without telepathy. It means a lot to us, you know, artists, when somebody likes our work. When somebody responds, not with a list of criticisms and editing notes, but with genuine pleasure, with genuine love. Jimmy nodded, and turned back to the band on stage temporarily, possibly to hide his smile.

“There’s something engaging in the fact that the tape, thereafter, would be useless as a recording device,” Louis said. I looked at him again. His eyes sparkled. His comment was directed to Shanti, but Jimmy nodded his head again.

“Something is destroyed in the concretization of experience,” he continued. “The potential, presumably, of all the experiences it could have been. There’s an appeal in something made of plastic, losing its commercial plasticity to produce another.”

Shanti and Jimmy nodded in unison. Delford had rolled his eyes at me, but I hadn’t returned the gesture.

“As if one experience is cannibalized to produce another. Perhaps, détournement.”

Shanti whistled. “Louis – is that your name? – that is a hot use of the term. I think I’m getting a crush on you.”

I almost began to laugh. Almost. I don't know how I didn't. Louis' expression made everything worse. He seemed prudishly startled for a moment, before seeming to resolve his face into something a little more contemporary. Would I have to stuff my hand into my mouth to prevent hysterics? Because that began to feel inevitable.

As it happened, though, I didn't. Louis said the very last thing I'd expected him to say. It was enough of a shock that at first I could do nothing but stare at him.  
“That is my name,” he said. “And thank you, I’m sure.”

I felt myself beaming, without intent and without design. Such grace! I wanted to drag him into my arms and kiss him repeatedly. Such grace and such charm! The behavior of an actual "boyfriend", just as the band had called him! He'd responded like this because they were my band, and he was here with me. I caught his eye and he looked away from me quickly, which seemed to absolutely confirm it. How I loved him then. However dreary I might have found such tedious human terms a week ago, however much I might have teased him as stupid or pedestrian for doing it now if we'd been speaking aloud, the truth was that I liked it far more than I cared to admit. Once I realized this, of course, I couldn't smile genuinely any more. But I did love him. And I could sling my arm around him, resting my hand on his far shoulder, saying, in a mocking voice,  
“I think I’ve got a crush on you too."

No reaction to that from Louis. Though I hadn’t really expected him to give one. His face was flat again, which in a sense was a reaction all of its own. I squeezed his shoulder a little. His eyes flashed. His lips thinned.

“What do you do anyway?” one of them had asked him, I forget which, my attention was elsewhere.

“I write book reviews.”

“Oh please! Louis is independently wealthy.”

For a split second, that Louis was bothered by my admission was obvious on his face. He covered it quickly, but I think his disdain was visible even to the band. Shanti snickered. “So did you guys like, meet at some party for rich young playboys? Was Batman there? Can you get me his autograph?”

All of them laughed at that, as did I. Though I wondered if they’d still laugh if I told them where Louis’ money had come from.

“I also write book reviews,” he said, and he smiled magnanimously. I wondered if he’d had the same thought as I had. His shoulder was smooth under my hand.

“He does actually write book reviews,” I said. “Even the independently wealthy must find something to occupy themselves. Wealth is really very boring, you’re lucky you don’t have to experience that.”

Louis looked at me out of the corner of his eye. A challenge? I couldn’t tell. Really, I thought it was that same expression he’d given me earlier. Awed incredulity. Cloaked malice. I smiled at him.

“For the _Press-Register_?” That was Shanti. “I like the reviewer they have now, is that you? Even if you did say a bunch of stupid shit about _The Corrections_.”

“Did I?” Louis said. He seemed oddly pleased. I wondered why, since Shanti had more or less insulted him.

“Look, I’ll give you a disclaimer here. I have a limited tolerance for the problems of middle-class white guys. I also have a limited tolerance for Franzen, based exclusively on that douchetastic tantrum he threw about Oprah’s Book Club.”

“I see.” Louis paused. Then he said, “you don’t consider that… “Oprah’s Book Club”… may be something a writer who wishes to be considered seriously may strive to avoid association with?”

“What I think,” she said, “is that I’m sure that’s exactly how Franzen thought about it, but it doesn’t make him any less of a pretentious asshole. What the fuck does that mean, “taken seriously?” It’s like, you want to promote your book and make lots of money, but you don’t want to promote it to the “wrong people”? It’s a dick move, Franzen. And actually, when I finally read it, I found out it was a dick move that was _quite fucking revealing_ about the content of the book.”

Louis laughed at that. It surprised me. I was familiar with this kind of argument from Shanti, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he would be.

“I suppose I was mostly interested in the discussion of familial dysfunction,” Louis said. “As a novel it’s not without relevance there.”

“Sure,” she said. “But there are a lot of books about family. None of them get called the Great American Novel. _That_ takes being a white guy who hates Oprah and only has a problem with _consumer_ capitalism. You know, the bad kind that has Oprah and plastic and apparently, Queer Theory – poor people’s capitalism. Not the good kind that has tweed jackets and organic food and _The New Yorker_. What Franzen is, essentially, is a carefully marketed excuse for middle-class liberals to feel better about the bigotries they’re not intending to address.”

He laughed again. Quickly. Really, Louis? I thought. I almost said something, but then, of course! I realized. The specifics of the argument didn't matter at all. His charming, polite laughter, his flattering yet deferential eye-contact, all of that was about something different. He wasn’t flirting with her, not exactly, but there was something in it that spoke to a very old dance, the gentleman, expertly negotiating the attractive opinions of a firey young lady. Oh God, don’t get a crush on her too, I wanted to say. At that point, I knew, his negotiations would cease to be expert. I tightened my hand on his arm, not out of possession, just necessity.

“Yet the fact that it cannot be divorced from its marketing,” he said, “is perhaps in line with the discussion that Franzen proposes. To an extent, American public discourse disguises a great deal of reduction by claiming to be “anti-elitist”.”

She smiled. “Yes. Okay. I’ll give you that. Okay, so everything is complicated. But the point holds. That kind of disdain, it’s a luxury. It’s a luxury belonging to the already powerful. You get that, right?”

Louis nodded. “Do you know John Cheever?”

“I studied comparative lit,” she said. “So, yeah.”

“I wonder,” he said. “This suggestion _The Corrections_ offers, beneath its narrative… this discussion of runaway industry as something that eventually divorces itself from “real” industry… while we might regard this as functionally true for some actual workers, can we consider it actually, generally true as a discussion of industry? Is this what you mean? That the story is more specific than it pretends to be?”

“Kind of,” she said. “Less Marxist than that, and with more of Franzen being a dick than that, but kind of.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Louis?” I interjected. “What you have said literally makes no sense.”

“Your plastic democracy,” he said, to me. “You know.”

“I don’t.”

“The book is about that, more or less. And the result, he thinks, is uselessness. And yet…” he turned back to Shanti, “to an extent, that’s part of your criticism, isn’t it? That there is still industry. Plastic, for all its fluidity, is still a petroleum by-product. It must still be extracted, it must still be manufactured in factories. By workers. Of the kind there always were.”

At that, everything made sense to me. Not Louis’ argument, that was just ludicrous, but Louis’ investment. I’d been wrong. The specifics did matter. Yes, Louis, I could have said, had I felt less charitable. Yes, Louis, you are correct in your assumption, this is still, in practical terms, a plantation.

Still, Shanti couldn’t have known this. When she spoke, she spoke with a pure pleasure that was touching to behold. That was her right, I suppose, consumable product as she was, assuming she could think her way out of it with her sweet, bloody heart. Jimmy admired her. Delford had finished his bourbon and looked bored. Louis and I simply watched.

“Part of the discussion of the book is a discussion of a generational alienation of worker from labor through neo-liberalism,” Shanti said. “And,” (she punctuated the “and”. That reminded me of David too. David, somehow, was present in his absence tonight), “a kind of cultural dissonance between the way in which white, protestant American values are held, and the way in which they are reflected or respected. So what you want to know is, is that experience culturally specific, or does it talk about all of capitalism. Yeah?”

“Yes,” Louis said. I felt such tenderness for him. For his guilt. For his need for some kind of real, redemptive answer from her. I so wanted to kiss him. He seemed so human, caring about something like this. I could have kissed him. Just once. He couldn't have known this. If I'd spoken, I'd have teased him, and he'd never have known. I squeezed his shoulder just once, and then I let go. As if by reflex, he touched the place my hand had been.

“I think,” she said, “look if I’m straight up with you, both.”

Louis nodded.

“And Jimmy?”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows at her.

“Jimmy, I want to do Grad school, okay? I just made a decision.”

“You should,” he said. “I can only barely follow you on this shit, but you should.”

She grinned. “Yeah, that’s how you know you’re a real academic. You become a person removed. Like Jonathan Franzen. If Oprah wants to give me a Master’s degree, I’ll turn it down.”

Louis laughed again. And though Shanti wouldn’t, I recognized the laugh as slightly different from the first. He knew it was funny, though in truth he was slightly preoccupied.

“Mmm,” he said.

“Is that what you meant, chéri?” I asked him. That was deferential of _me_. I suppose I owed him.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I’m only thinking.”

“I can solve that for you if you want to know,” Delford had folded his hand under his chin. “Ohmigod capitalism is bullshit! There, I pointed out the fucking obvious, do I get a degree now?”

Louis was amused. So was Shanti. “It’s more complicated than that, dickface,” she said, but declined to elaborate.

“So I notice you guys are actually dating now, making plans together and all,” said Delford, to her. He included Jimmy in this statement, that was apparent. “That’s okay, man, date if you want to. But if you fuck up the band I will cut you.”

“You’ll cut me?” she said, but she’d started to laugh. So had Jimmy. He was shaking his head again, extracting another smoke. I hadn’t noticed him butting out the first. Louis had given me a look, I noticed. He waited until he’d caught my eye, and then he raised one eyebrow again, slowly enough that it was almost theatrical. _This_ is your band? He seemed to be asking. I smiled back at him.

“I’ll cut you,” Delford said, but he’d started to laugh too. Shanti smacked him softly at the back of his head. He faked pain at it, but then he grinned at her too.

“Delford,” Jimmy said, “when you’re done threatening us, you want to get me a drink?”

“Why would I get you a drink?”

“Because you owe me money.”

He sighed. “Everybody has a boyfriend except for me.”

“Where’d you get the scarf?”

“It’s mine.”

“Solidarity with Palestine, huh?”

Delford had stood up. “I need to be drunker than this. I’ll get you something. Shanti?”

“I have work,” Shanti said. “I need to go.”

“How come you have work on a Sunday?”

“Sometimes adults have to work on Sundays, sweet pea. Especially when part of their job is looking over promotional material for a release on Monday. Not everybody works at the fucking Krispy Kreme.”

“Don’t you be disrespecting the Krispy Kreme,” he said, cocking his hip. “I don’t bring my work home with me ‘less it come in a box-a donuts. Plus you’re dating a guy who works at Wal Mart.”

“There’s an employee discount,” Jimmy said.

“Whatever, you turncoat. Sell us all out to corporate American, why doncha?”

He must have been drunk already, or at least affected by smoking. I’d noticed this about all of them over time. Their accents were cosmopolitan until the night wore on. I remembered Shanti on the first night we’d met, drunk enough to fall over, saying to me “oh Lord, the baby Jesus don’t love me no more,” and I doubted she’d learned that at Berkeley. What an effort it must be, masking one’s voice all of the time. But it wasn’t just drunkenness. Jimmy and Shanti were relaxed. Delford wasn’t.

“Ohmigod capitalism is bullshit!” Shanti was saying to Delford, imitating him now. “Krispy Kreme is a publicly traded company, did you notice?”

“It’s not the same.”

“It is the same. They sell Krispy Kreme _at Wal Mart_. Nobody’s job is that great.”

“Says Missus indie record label.”

“That’s Ms.,” she said.

“Feel free to find me another job,” said Jimmy. “The pay’s shit and there’s no benefits. It’s not like I wanted to work there. This is a recession, man. I’m kind of lucky to have a job at all.”

As if by instinct, I’d put my arm around Louis again. Around his waist this time. His narrow, suit-jacketed waist. How terrible to have to think about this, I might have said to him. Put it out of your mind, darling, I’d be saying if we were at home. But it wasn’t even that we were vampires. It’s that we’d lived in the Old South. Back when Louis’ own work and property had been part of the industry that had built it, had sustained it, had brought it tumbling down. He touched my hand with his and I held his fingers. Delford had left, rolling his eyes again. I would have worried about him, had I cared at all.

“What about Katrina?” he asked, Louis.

“Maybe unrelated,” Jimmy said. “It’s one of those things. There were less jobs for a while, and then there were more, and then less in ’08 again. I don’t know, I wasn’t really working then. I was still living at home. This is just what my dad said.”

Louis nodded. He must have seen my expression though, because he said, “the population of Mobile increased after the hurricane. Refugees.”

“I knew that,” I said. A little too indignantly. Nobody noticed.

“Are you coming with me?” Shanti had said. To Jimmy. He leaned back in his chair.

“You really wanna go now? I kind of wanted to stay for the next guys.”

“Uh huh,” she said. “Are you okay to drive, or should I?”

“I only had a couple of drinks, I think I’m good.”

“You sure about that?”

“You’re not driving,” Jimmy said. “You don’t rant like that unless you’re hell stoned.”

“You’re living together,” I said. I smiled when I said it. That was genuine, I think. Jimmy made a sheepish expression.

“Could be love,” he said.

“Oh Jesus!” Shanti made a dramatic face. “No fucking pressure!”

“Have to think about it if you do Grad school,” Jimmy said, putting his cigarettes into his pants pocket. “Can’t do it here, you know.”

She sighed. “Come on.”

Jimmy stood up, extending his hand to Shanti and pulling her out of her seat. Then, he leaned across the table and shook Louis’ hand again. “Nice to meet you, man.”

“Yes, you too,” he said. To Shanti, he said, “I’ll take your comments under advisement.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You’re okay man. Just try to be a little harder on those guys.”

He smiled. “I may.”

“You have my blessing,” I said.

“Well, thanks, Frankie, I was waiting for that.”

Jimmy laughed, putting his arm around her. “Delford is a shit influence on you.”

“You two are _really_ living together,” I said. “How long is this?”

“For forever,” Jimmy said, sighing. “That’s how it feels.”

 

Good. You noticed. Good. That means you’re listening.

I should have noticed too, I know that, but in my defense, I’d been caught up in Louis. Louis, whose black-jacketed arms and cold white fingers had begun to move against mine just slightly. Just slightly, as if a weather pattern or an afterthought. From anyone else, that movement could have been unintentional.

I didn’t remark upon it. I did take it as permission to place my other hand over his, enclosing it, and I did lean into him. But besides that, I only watched Jimmy and Shanti leave. They picked up their gear, and Shanti shook her hair back from her face, and they left. Louis felt good in my arms. He felt nostalgic and comfortable, something I was dimly aware would last only as long as we remained silent. I moved closer. He allowed me to rest my head against his shoulder. Or rather, I did so, and he made no comment about it.

Instead he said, “this is a liberal bar.” It was an odd thing to say. I hadn’t noticed. Though the mere fact that I’d been able to kiss him here without any kind of rebuke should probably have clued me in to his correctness, if I’d paid even the slightest attention to that kind of thing. I didn’t care about social mores when I was alive, and I have no intention of starting now.

“Who cares about that?”

“They do,” he said. “They have their own bars, don’t you think that’s interesting? Your friend Delford is wearing an Obama pin.”

“He didn’t vote for him.”

“Oh, no?”

“No, it’s a position. Ask him when he gets back, see if he doesn’t tell you.”

“I may do that,” Louis said. It struck me that he seemed as if he genuinely might, given the chance. That was odd too, odd enough that I genuinely wondered why. “Aren’t you bored of this?” I asked.

“I’m enjoying myself,” he told me. “I’m glad you asked me to come.”

“Of course I asked you.”

“I don’t think it was of course,” Louis said. “Was it? I’ve been trying to think of another time you’ve invited me somewhere, as opposed to telling me, or following me. I am bereft of examples.”

That took me by surprise. Enough surprise to snap a little. “There are examples.”

“As you wish,” he said. But it was apparent he did not believe me.

“There are.”

“Does it matter that much to you to win?” he asked, and that was so infuriating that I almost pulled away.

“No, you’ve just forgotten, that’s all. You have a selective memory. You’ve always had one. That’s not my fault, it’s yours.”

“Lestat,” he said, quietly. He moved his hand again. “I’m not about to do anything you wouldn’t wish me to.”

“I didn’t say you would, I only…”

“I am sorry I left you.”

Oh Merciful Death, what was _that_ supposed to mean. “Don’t talk about that now, Louis. Not now.”

“Alright,” he said. “I apologize.”

But who was this deferential imposter? His fingers had become entwined in mine, and his voice was gentle. I closed my eyes briefly at its contact, hearing its echo a little too much for comfort. Too many memories in that voice. And not only the terrible things. Not only those. Other things too. I was close enough to him that I heard his breathing.

“Of course,” he said, “there are some parts of the nineteen eighties I do recall.”

I don’t know if I seethed or didn’t. I want to tell you that I was angry, or that I found this arousing, or terrifying, or beautiful. But I have nothing to tell you but this: I felt blood against my skin. Filling me. Too quickly I recalled were we sat. A human bar with human beings all around us, when I wanted to open up his throat and begun feasting at it. So close to doing that, but I didn’t move.

“Stop that,” I growled.

He did. He added nothing else to the conversation, barring a quick expression I couldn’t read. I looked away from him. I could see Delford at the bar, laughing, probably criticizing. Shanti had kissed his cheek before she left. There were one or two other people I recognized, but I couldn’t even be bothered to recall their names.

“You do this on purpose,” I said, to Louis, in a low voice. A threat, I think, though a threat he appeared to ignore. “You’re doing something to me.”

He didn’t speak.

I wished he would. I wished he’d speak now. Though I also wished he wouldn’t. I knew the precise memory he meant me to recall, 1985, when he’d come back to me and made me an offer, I didn’t need him to clarify. I wanted to remember it perfectly, and yet I also didn’t. The equivalent weight of those two desires was momentarily confusing. Closed my eyes again. Opened them. “Let us have each other in this century the way we never did in the past,” he’d said, then, all those years ago. “And I do mean all of us.” Promises, promises.

Louis’ face was strange at this angle. I began to move my fingers too, against his body, as gently as I could. I wanted to claw at him. I wanted to bite his lips, but instead I brushed his hipbone, felt the fabric of his undershirt move under the layers of jacket and shirt. His suit seemed a mere nod to containing him. Under these clothes, I knew, his white flesh would radiate both fragility and coldness.

“You’re right,” I said, into his shoulder. “You’re always right. I’m sorry I’ve never invited you anywhere.”

“I didn’t say it to be right.”

He had used his free hand to lift his bourbon when he spoke, and now he returned his glass to the table, genteely, with lowered eyes. His lips were ever so slightly pursed. I’d begun to stare at him. I’d begun to forget myself. Either because of this, or to address it, I slipped my fingers under the waistband of his trousers, beneath his short pants, against his skin.

I wondered why he didn’t flinch when I did it. It must have been startling. Yet he received my touch if he’d expected it. His body beneath my hand felt every bit as cold as I had imagined it to feel, and every bit as smooth, and perfect. And his face was the same in terms of expression.

“Then why?” I asked, but it wasn’t me asking, not really.

Louis’ hand moved over mine. Very lightly, once again as if it were by accident, though I knew him far better than to assume that anything he did was accidental. I could see him thinking. It seemed to last forever, and at first I thought his silence was to be my answer. It wasn’t.

“Because I love you,” he said. In the darkness, in our nearness, it was the only sound in the world.

For a short moment I stayed there. I didn’t reply of course, that would have been literally impossible, but I let myself hear it, I let myself experience everything that came of it. He let me do this too, my fingers still now, the pause not breathless, but certainly eternal. I wish I could have said what I wanted to. I wish I could have responded in kind, or kissed him honestly, or any of the ten thousand things I would have done had I been somebody else. But I couldn’t do any of it. And soon, I lifted my face from his shoulder.

I kept my arm about his waist, but my other hand I returned to my own possession. I stretched it in front of me, examining it, scanning my gaze over the bar, over the uninteresting new band, anywhere but his face. Louis might have taken this as slight, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked toward the stage as I did, his own expression one of resigned fondness.

“Covers of familiar refrains,” he said, “perhaps they’ll vary in quality.”

“Just you be quiet,” I told him. His brow furrowed, but he took me at my word.

I don’t know what would have happened had Delford not rejoined us. Perhaps Louis and I would have started speaking again, perhaps we would have fought? I felt dangerously close to fighting with him, though I was dimly aware, even then, that he’d done nothing to really deserve it. Perhaps it was for the best that human concerns had arrived to distract me. By the grace of God, I could be Francis again, and not Lestat, and thus I could save myself from tearing a violent hole in Louis’ attempt to confuse me with tenderness. Bastard.

“What were you doing at the bar?” I asked him, Delford.

“Drinking,” he said. “You’re not in love with me anymore, I’ve got to explore other options.”

“I’ll always be in love with you,” I said, lightly. I sometimes wonder if this was when I first knew I’d be able to have him. I don’t honestly think so, although I suppose the benefit of reflection allows me to translate that feeling into this narrative now. Whatever the truth of that is, I felt a flash of something from Delford as he sat down, and it was sharp, but my awkwardness in stepping between roles allowed it to slip from my attention.

Louis may have felt it too. We’ve never spoken about whether or not he can read minds now. Or rather, we have, but it was just as frustrating as his pretentious discussion about reading books. “It’s not really reading that you do,” he’d said to me. “It’s suspicion, and inference. And skimming.” So perhaps it was for some other reason that he looked at Delford as he did. Perhaps he’d been as distracted by me as I was by him and simply forgotten that the bar was full of edible humans.

“If y’all aren’t drinking this, then I sure as shit will,” Delford said, taking my bourbon away from me, completely unaware that he exposed his tender, unshaven neck as he leaned forward to do it. Louis’ gaze, I realized, had not let that exposure escape its notice.

For some reason, that gave me a secret pleasure, following his eyes. Yes, you’re a monster, darling, I thought. You can’t pretend you’re not. And Delford had had another drink at the bar. Possibly two or three, from the way he said “y’all.” “Y’all,” and not “you guys,” as he’d called us before.

He said it again.

“I just thought I would tell you that y’all are gross,” he said. “I consider that a public service announcement. Y’all are gross. Nobody wants to see this couple shit.”

“You’re just jealous,” I said.

“No, I’m just normal,” he said. “I can’t do this gay pride bullshit. It’s not any better when it’s straight people. It’s just a distraction from the fucking issue.”

“I think that’s tragic,” I said. “You’ve no idea how lucky you are, living in this time. It used to be different, didn’t it, Louis?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Louis said. There was a warning in his tone. I laughed.

“People speculate about history,” I said. “Why wouldn’t they?”

Louis ignored me. I thought he’d thinned his lips again, though it had been done quickly and I couldn’t be sure. He looked at Delford, his eyes shadowed. Don’t you want to kill him? I wanted to say. Wouldn’t you like it? He’s drunk, and he’s vulnerable, just as you used to be. He’s begun to fray at the edges, I think he’d welcome it. But Louis, my Louis, he was far more peculiar than that.

“You’re a supporter of President Obama?” he asked. I nearly laughed again.

Delford’s expression went blank. Then he followed Louis’ gaze to his pin and comprehended. “Oh fuck no. I just like pissing off racists.”

“Then you preferred McCain?”

“Um, no. I don’t vote for anyone. Because I’m not a fucking idiot.”

I grinned. And I watched Louis. I wasn’t sure whether he’d hear what Delford had said as some challenge, or merely as an amusing irrelevancy. But Louis only smiled. Graciously, and with measure. No teeth.

“I see,” he said. “And why is that?”

“Because this is a two party system, and both parties suck flaming shit-balls, and there ain’t no fucking point to voting for anyone,” Delford told us, in The Voice of Truth, knocking back my bourbon and wincing in a perfect performance of resigned, masculine despair. He leaned forward and took Louis’ without asking. “Do _you_ vote?”

“Shall we say that my opinion is not quite so firm as yours.”

“Yeah, well, I put that down to a lack of knowledge.”

Louis smiled again. I knew that particular smile. I knew it well. As he gave it, I felt a rush of attraction to him, stronger than before, strong enough to make me forget my instinct to bait him. I was only just able to restrain myself from doing something with my hand besides resting it against him. I remembered having said this to him, years ago, though nothing like the way he tells it, speaking under circumstances best forgotten: you, Louis, I’d said, you are an intellect. That was what this smile meant, now. That he was about to Be An Intellect. It was almost like watching him prepare to hunt.

“Or the lack of an appropriately invested perspective perhaps,” he said. Tactic one I recognized. Withdrawal of personal care. Beautiful. “But, what do you intend to do about this state of affairs, if it is as tragic as you suggest?”

“I intend to do nothing,” Delford said. “Not one fucking thing. Doing things is the problem. Doing shit without fucking thinking. Representative Democracy never considered that maybe everyone shouldn’t be represented. You get me?”

“I “get” you,” Louis had said. His eyes flashed at the colloquialism. I did laugh a little then. But Louis was still talking, and my hand was still in his pants.

“As you are arguing,” Louis continued, “democracy as a governing system is, at its least favorable, more or less mob rule.”

“Yep.”

“And so you don’t vote.”

“Yep.”

“Because then you would be part of a mob.”

“Yep.”

“So what _do_ you do?”

“I despair. And everybody should.”

He won’t fault you there, I thought.

“I can’t fault you there,” Louis said.

Now Delford grinned. He really was gorgeous when he smiled. How well I recalled our first meeting. How biting and nasty he was, but how sweet and innocent too. That night he’d been wearing a grey, woven fedora. When he’d cracked jokes at me, when he’d shamelessly flirted a drink out of me without acknowledging that he did so, he’d raised his eyebrows and the hat had slipped up on his head because of it. I’d felt sure he did that intentionally, but his thoughts were strangely, nervously, accidentally guarded and I couldn’t tell. Here and now, he fondled his keffiyeh, probably for the same reason, and its drape was fetching. He recalled, however unintentionally, a British dandy. David. Again.

“Louis is a closet Republican,” I said, to shake that away, to remember him as Delford and Delford only. To please him, to give him a little favor, because I felt he deserved it. “By which I mean that I don’t think he votes at all, but he’s a Republican by virtue of being closeted.”

Too far. Louis gave me a hard look. “Excuse me?” he said, politely, but with unmistakeable malice, and I shut up. The other option was fighting with him and it would not have worked out well for me. I gave him a dismissive expression in response, but I knew I’d been chastened. Shame. And then fury. As if by reflex, I dug my fingernails sharply into his skin.

Louis breathed in sharply, and his eyes went wide. Just for a second. I’d pulled myself back in enough time that the puncture was shallow, but he did bleed. I could smell it. I was spellbound by that scent for a moment, crisp and metallic on the air, if only for that second. The wound closed quickly – I hadn’t cut him deeply at all - and the blood was already dry and I wanted desperately to extract my hand and lick it clean. But I didn’t. And he didn’t look at me. I don’t know why I didn’t remove my hand, though I think I know why he chose not to comment. Shame, again.

Shame enough that I hadn’t even noticed that Delford had laughed. “Yeah well, you better not vote for them if you don’t want another Deepwater Horizon, that’s my advice to you. I mean, don’t vote for the Democrats either, but don’t vote for the Republicans. Not that I give a shit about the environment.”

“So I gather,” Louis said. The concern on his face made me furious. Concern for that, but not for me when I hurt you, I thought. Not appropriate. You need to stop talking right now, and forgive me. “But I’m wondering… given your position, perhaps that this is conditional of industry. If the petroleum industry is as ubiquitous as it seems to be, government may not make a great deal of difference either way. That’s implied, isn’t it? By your position.”

“Yeah,” Delford said. “I mean, shit yeah. The Deepwater rig’s maintained by Halliburton. And they sort of own the government any which way.”

Louis frowned again. “The oil company.”

“ _The_ oil company. The oil company we went to war for, man. Fuckers got a tanker named after Condoleezza Rice. Cheney owned fucking shares. Conflict of interest much?”

“You’re naming appointees of the Bush Junior government, however. That would actually support the thesis that a Republican government would be less favorable than a Democrat government, if our only concern were environmental disaster and its prevention.”

“Yes, that’s our concern,” I said, scathingly. “Why don’t you tell everyone about it, chéri. I’m sure Delford wants to get upset about plastic too.”

I’m not sure that Delford had even heard me. Either because he was drunk or because he was focused. I don’t know. “Spoken like a true _New York Times_ reader,” he said, to Louis. “Find any weapons of mass destruction in your drink? I guess you’re looking at those right now or you might have noticed that we got a Democrat president and we’re still all up in fucking Afghanistan. Think they’re there for the scenery? Or for the Trans-Afghani Pipeline?”

“I do read the _New York Times_ ,” Louis told him “It is, I think, a reasonable paper on matters of politics as such things go, though of course it has both its faults and its tendencies. And the situation in Afghanistan is more complicated than only resources, don’t you think? Leaving aside that the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline proposes to serve East Asia, not the United States.”

“No, I don’t think. World rises and falls on oil right now. Countries are arbitrary. You’d have to be fucking asleep to miss that. But it’s cute how you call him Bush Junior. I want to forgive you for being ignorant, because you’re cute.”

Louis smiled again, though thinly this time. “What do you call him?”

“Just Bush. Or Dubya.” Delford said. He fondled his chin for a moment. “Or Darth Moron.”

Louis laughed. It was heartbreakingly genuine. It was a real, honest laugh, even if it was every bit as quiet and reserved as a laugh from Louis would always be. I felt my hand tense again, all on its own, but I didn’t cut him again. I managed not to. Only just, though. Oh you’ll laugh now, will you? I thought, as I kept myself from doing it. You’ll laugh for him, but you won’t realize what you’ve done to me. I, of course, recalled Bush Junior. It’s not the sort of thing I’d usually have paid attention to, a President, but it was difficult to forget the half hour diatribe Louis had given on the word “misunderestimated” before angrily turning the channel to NBC.

Shall we be honest? I had thought it was sweet. I had thought Bush Junior was sweet. On the rare occasions that I had bothered to watch the news with Louis, his bumbling discomfort with speech had endeared him to me, while his earnest assertion that God had wanted him to be President had intrigued me. Perhaps as a result, until Louis had left, I had tried to use the word as often as possible.

I may have misunderestimated its effect, however. During our running argument over television spectacle and 9/11, I had (not so) innocently asked, “do you think they misunderestimated the terrorists?” and while Louis’ fuming silence had kept me laughing for hours, he had left shortly thereafter. It was unrelated, of course – we didn’t break up over 9/11, not even intellectuals do that. It’s simply that that argument had been symptomatic of every other. It made me doubly irritated to recall this in the face of Louis’ laughter now. I honestly think, I wanted to tell Delford, that Bush’s illiteracy had bothered Louis far more than his politics could ever have done.

“I wonder” Louis had said, as if in some other conversation, and I realized I had missed entire tracts of their speaking in the time I had been fuming over the Bush administration. “There’s a journalist. Joe Bageant. He takes a similar position, and argues that the class divide in general in the United States is maintained by what he describes as an “education gap”. You may find his work interesting, though of course his opinion is ideologically formed. He describes himself as a communist, though I gather from the work that he votes Democrat.”

“Write his name down,” Delford told him. A command. He knocked Louis’ bourbon back now, though less thoughtfully he’d done with mine. Louis did as he was asked. He reached into his inside jacket pocket, and his ass moved forward, away from my hand, and he tore a page from his notebook to write on it. The sound of it shocked me. His notebook. He’d never have done that.

Delford took the paper when Louis gave it to him. He folded it and shoved it into the pocket of his pants. I almost winced at that. That’s Louis’ notebook paper, I wanted to say. Don’t you know how precious that is? Then Louis’ body was against my hand again, and I didn’t doubt that he knew it was there.

“Will you consider this, though,” Louis asked, of Delford, and Delford looked up. He’d lit another cigarette even though one still burnt in the ashtray, I noticed. “You oppose the idea of a bifurcation, and of a determined political class. You consider both recent wars unconscionable. However you won’t vote, and given your position on mass movement, you don’t, I presume, propose revolution. What is the difference between our positions, in practicality?”

“What _is_ your position?” Delford had leaned forward to ask this. He seemed to believe he had Louis on the ropes, and I could see him taking pleasure in it. His hot, pink, human little lips were pursed in a victorious semi-smile. His eyes were squinted. The whole performance shrieked of manifest will. “You won’t say. _Are_ you a closet Republican?”

Louis seemed as if he’d actually considered the question. “My position…” he said, contemplatively. “Shall we call it… fatalistically in favor of the status quo.”

“What?”

“Or, disinterested observer, perhaps. Whatever happens, I assume, with little regard to recent trends in physics for which I apologize,” yeah, very funny Louis, “that it was always going to. And also that humans, people, will tend to stabilize around some form of… oppression, as you say now. Order, as we used to call it. It will inevitably do little more than skim the surface of things that are really meaningful, and so it will be resisted. Yet it will reform. Human society, we might call a coalescence of reasonably ordered denial of meaningfulness. Humans individually, however, regardless of structure, cannot help but despair at such things, and make meaning, as you are now. Humans by nature are in opposition to the societies they create. And yet they will create them. So, I remain fatalistic.”

“Supposing you tell me what you consider meaningful.”

Louis shrugged. The same buttery movement as it always was. Delford, I noted, saw it too. Or at least, he seemed to respond, because his eyes went a little wider and blood flooded his cheeks. I wasn’t jealous of this. Louis was my property, after all. It pleased me that others should look upon him and find him good. “Beauty,” he said, true to form. His tone was airy and dismissive. “Love. Nobility. Kindness. Resonance with some manner of… reality, I suppose. The usual things. Before which politics are interesting as a diversion, but really somewhat irrelevant.”

“Oh Jesus, fuck you!” Delford was suddenly irritated. Very suddenly. It seemed to come from nowhere. And in a way that I’d never seen, I realized. It was real. It wasn’t accompanied by a roll of the eyes, or a bitter crack. Louis hadn’t moved, but Delford had furiously lit a third cigarette, and he took one or two drags on it, as if to calm himself down. Louis had actually made him angry.

“Listen,” he said, “what the fuck you call politics if it ain’t that? It’s not some damn game, it’s not _arbitrary_. Tell that to Fallujah. Tell it to Palestine. Fuck, you’re French, tell it to Algeria. Jesus fucking Christ. Shanti is right about you, man.”

Nothing. Welcome to Louis, I wanted to say. I didn’t though. Despite my own complicated anger, it was too much fun to watch. Louis did and said nothing, for whole minutes, minutes in which I forgave him utterly, minutes in which I remembered every secret expression his motionless face could wear. He kept his gaze level, squarely upon Delford. Then, he lifted his glass and appeared to drink from it. The fact that the glass was empty now didn't seem to matter.

“Isn’t it arbitrary?” he asked, as if it mattered slightly less than a crumpled paper in a vintage pocket, as if it meant nothing to him at all. “You won’t vote. I see an inconsistency.”

“It’s different. And it’s fucked up how you say human,” Delford said. His voice sounded calmer now, as if he’d begun to paint over his accidental fissure. “Like you’re not.”

“Ah, well. That structure is unfortunately human,” Louis said. “We are all of us a part of that. As such, I seldom waste sleep over its specificities.”

Bullshit, I thought. Again, I would have said it. I resisted the temptation to weigh in on Delford’s behalf, to reveal something else about Louis. Oh, he worries, I’d have said. He thinks. What do you think he’s doing, knowing about Bush and Obama and liberal bars at all? He doesn’t have to.

Yet I didn’t. His body and my hand. I felt stupid and awed and just as much on tenterhooks as Delford did. And as it happened, Louis revealed himself. Sort of.

“Though in general I suppose I do admire these movements towards an idealistic equity,” he said. “Something in that seems human too, even if it is doomed for failure.”

“But that’s not status quo,” Delford insisted. “If you don’t care about government, but you care about that… that’s like, some Thoreau shit or something.”

“I assure you it’s not. Thoreau says something quite different. Though perhaps what he says is true of your position. You do care, don’t you? It’s not only nihilism.”

Delford wouldn’t speak.

“And you’re right in essence, I suppose,” Louis continued. “My heart is bleeding a little, had you noticed?”

He put his drink down, artfully not having drunk from it. At its contact with the table, realization struck. The son of a bitch was flirting, and my good humor evaporated.

“Stop torturing the boy, Louis,” I said, not removing my hand. But I held it rigid and my voice was ice. “Nobody wants to hear your tales of abyssal woe.”

“Y’all need to watch some Michael Moore,” Delford said. He’d started to slur his words. But the command, given his proximity to Louis’ favor, aggravated me.

“Who’s Michael Moore?” I said.

“He’s a liberal filmmaker,” Louis told me. “I’ve seen some of his films. They’re quite inflammatory. I assume deliberately so.”

“Gotta watch _Fahrenheit 9/11_ ,” Delford said. “Lots of stuff about Halliburton in there.”

“Ah, I turned that one off,” Louis said. “Moore’s works are a little hysterical for my taste in general, but that film in particular I felt to be… somewhat pretentious.”

“You can’t call it pretentious!” Delford almost shouted, as if Louis had actually upset him again. My heart broke for him a little, and I forgave him. Louis was at fault here, that I understood.

“You get angry about anything, they call you pretentious,” he’d continued. Petulantly enough that I was briefly reminded of myself. “Like people are proud of being dumb.”

“Sarcastic then,” Louis said. “Still. At this point we’re merely suggesting a more precise grade of pretentiousness.”

“Something is too pretentious for you?” I asked, in what I very much intended as a cutting tone. “This I have to see.”

“You’d be bored,” Louis said. “It’s not your sort of thing at all.”

“I can do politics,” I said, a little too indignantly, and Louis turned to me, giving me a fond, apologetic smile.

“No,” he said. “You can’t. You are complete political innocent. And it is, much to my chagrin, very much a part of your considerable charm.”

He may as well have slapped me. I didn’t know whether to be insulted or complimented. The sensations were equivalent in violence, and I said nothing at all.

“What do you think?” he asked me. “About the spill? About Deepwater Horizon?”

“I think the earth will take care of itself,” I said. “Humans! They always think the planet begins and ends with them.”

“Ah, well. There’s some truth to that,” said Louis. Thank you _so much_ , I thought.

 


	12. The Difficult Second Album (part four)

The Difficult Second Album (part four)

I almost can’t be bothered to tell you the rest of it. The fury in the recollection of that moment is too great. I shouldn’t let it overwhelm me, I know. Any more than I should have broken my damned ‘phone over Louis’ silence at the beginning of the chapter. Like that, I ought to have let this wash over me, taking the lessons of teen fiction aboard, welcoming maturity, and graciously allowing Louis to be Louis, because there is no chance of his ever changing. I do know that I _should_ do that, I promise. It’s just that I didn’t.

Merciful death, but have some sympathy for me, won’t you? One of my supplementary document windows, open now on my pristine and fabulously new macbook “Air”, is filled up with his editing notes, notes I had honestly intended to learn from as I began my work tonight. The notes are so like him. So barbed and clean and wholly ambiguous, and I never should have bothered, and you must understand how heartbreaking that is. He won’t touch me any more, but this, this is _like_ being touched by him. Enough like it to know that I never should have bothered loving him at all.

Nor welcoming him there, in Retroville, inviting him and allowing him into my secret life. No matter that I’d made it for him, no matter what happened afterward. Nothing forgives it. And I never should have let him edit my novel. Are you reading this, Louis? I’m adding that regret to the list of millions. I hope you’re happy, you smug, over-educated bastard. I hope you read this and cry. I’m not sorry about anything.

(Alright, Lestat. Calm down. You’re getting off topic. Write the story. Write the story they want to hear).

(And don’t talk to yourself. Mon Dieu, don’t do that. That’s not a promising sign, and you have recently destroyed the means by which you are able to contact your therapist).

(Stop thinking about your damned ‘phone. You’ll have another one. You’ll have a hundred more if you want them. You have all of the money you could possibly need).

(And no more damned parentheses. What do you think this is? Postmodern fiction?)

Shall we reconvene then, back at the table in Retroville?

(Yes, darlings, I think we shall).

So. So, Louis and Delford had been talking, and I’d been interjecting, not even really talking, just interrupting them. That had happened. So, they’d talked about American politics, and it had bored me. That had also happened. And Delford was drunk. He was too drunk, I think, and that wasn’t unusual for him, but it angered me a little, that he’d let himself come to pieces in front of me, and that it had seemed to happen so suddenly. Because I wanted to protect him from Louis, I suppose, and that instinct frustrated me because I also wanted to drain him. His unsteady fingers had ground out two of the cigarettes he had burning, and I was confused again. Not really confused. Just exhausted. And furious in general, and in no particular direction.

“Why bother talking about it at all,” I said to them both. “Isn’t that what you’re really saying? That there’s no point to any of this, the world is doomed, and all art is utterly, utterly useless. We are only sucking blood from the earth as if we were parasites.”

“Not quite like a…” Louis began, and I knew what he meant to say, so I cut him off.

“It’s a metaphor, Louis. You do know what that is, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Stop being so damned sensitive.”

“I hardly think that to…”

“Shut up,” I hissed. “I mean it. You shut your mouth right now, or so help me, Louis, I will shut it for you.”

He thinned his lips. Only his lips. I think he was about to speak despite my command, but then Delford did, and he held his tongue.

“That _is_ what I’m saying,” Delford said, somewhat blearily. “It’s what I’m saying. And you and me, Frankie. We have exactly the same heart and that’s why, y’know, that’s exactly why we make such beautiful music together, but it doesn’t mean anything at all. Because of this bullshit. Because of power.”

“Yes, love.”

“No really,” he said, “because… Iron and Wine, and… that one song.”

“Delford…” I said. I had to think for a moment before I continued. “Mon petit, of course it means something. Art always means something, that’s what it’s for.”

Louis was still giving me his thin-lipped expression, but I had no desire to apologize, or even to smooth things over in a way that could be interpreted as apology. You know what you did, I wanted to say, though I didn’t. Instead, I slipped away from him and moved my chair toward Delford’s. I put my arm around him tenderly, and he hugged me in desperation.

That was hard to bear. His body was sweaty and hot and it seemed to pulse with life. His cheek felt so warm for a second I wondered if I might already be drinking from him. But I was only kissing him lightly. It was only a passing touch.

“Don’t think too much,” I told him. “You’re an artist, you don’t need to think.”

“This isn’t fucking art, you know that.”

“Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation,” I said. “That’s even a quote, though I don’t know from whom. So you see, it’s official.”

“Frankie…”

“Louis is right,” I said. “He’s always right, and he always will be. That is his curse, his perpetual rightness. He’s right that you do care. You can’t help it. And that’s wonderful. Don’t be sad, darling. You’re just a little drunk.”

“I think I’m a lot fucking drunk. But that’s good. That’s good. Because you can… blot out the world, you know, you can blot it out.”  
“Why don’t I drive you home?” I said, stroking his far shoulder. “You’ll sleep and dream of President Bush and the fact that you didn’t vote for him.”

“It’s not art because it’s better than that. Art is bullshit. It just means… rich people. But folk music. You know, traditionals. It’s only bullshit that music ever wasn’t that. We’re fixing it.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“I’m doing something,” he said. His eyes snapped open. “I’m arguing with your fucking boyfriend.”

“No, you’re not. Louis has said everything he needed to say.”

“I’m not going home with you, Frankie. I’m not your kid. I’m not anybody’s kid. I’m grown. If I want to be drunk in a bar, nobody is going to stop me.”

The bar staff might, I thought, briefly. But that wasn’t any of my affair. “You’re certain of that?”

“’Course I’m fucking certain. I’m grown. You heard me.”

I dropped my arm back into my lap. That pained me. Though in another way, it was a relief. I really didn’t want to kill him, if only because he was my guitarist, and I suspected, had I driven him home, that I may have done. “You won’t drive.”

“You fucking control freak motherfucker!” Delford said. Loudly. Louis looked startled. I, however, had anticipated it and did not. “I’m grown,” Delford said, a third time, though more quietly now.

“Delford,” said Louis. “I do apologize if I…”

“You’re good, man.” Delford said. “You’re good. Frankie just has this… everything. He doesn’t ever _do_ anything but he has to be the fucking boss of it.”

I rolled my eyes. Louis, I noticed, had almost smiled, but it died on his lips when I glared at him.

“We’re going,” I said. “If you want to drink yourself to death in here, that’s your concern.”

“Damn right it is.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I will if I feel like it.”

“You’re really pissing me off, you know.”

“Feeling’s mutual. Go on and drive home in your big ol’ Porsche. Give a little love to the petroleum industry.”

“Text me,” I’d said, and I’d kissed him.

“I won’t text you. Texting is for assholes. Cellphones are for assholes.”

Eventually he did text me, but by then I was busy. Now, I’d stood up. I put some money on the table. I’m not sure for what. It just seemed appropriate. Perhaps it was a tip.

But Louis did not stand up when I did. “Come on,” I snapped. Louis hesitated.

“See?” That was Delford. And he was smirking.

I didn’t bother to reply. Louis did smile then, acquiescently. “I know,” he said. I wanted to hit him.

“Louis!” I barked. “Come with me now.”

He did follow me then. I knew what a figure I cut, keyboard in a case, the violin too, striding across the bar in leather jacket and glasses. I hoped he saw it too, the power in my command of space. I left without acknowledging anyone, not even the bar staff. Somebody would probably mention that to somebody else, I’d probably hear about it – that’s the thing you forget, about being human, when you aren’t. That they’ll talk about your every action, however minor, however uselessly banal. Their lives are so short – your lives are so short – that you must pick over everything in order to feel significant.

Louis, however, did not speak until we were outside. The fog was hanging low over the parking lot, mixing with the shadows, and for a moment I looked at it, so still and enveloping, as if nothing had, or would ever happen.

“What is this all about?” he said.

I said nothing.

“What is this tone?” he insisted.

“You think you’re so much smarter than me,” I said, before I could stop myself. I regretted it instantly. As if I could unsay it by doing this, I turned my back on him, pirouetting and marching across the parking lot. My black Porsche, at least, would make no such evaluative judgment. I unlocked it.

“No,” Louis said. He seemed to pause for a moment before following me to the Porsche. “No, I don’t think that. _You_ think I’m smarter than you. But you’re perfectly intelligent, you’re only lazy.”

“But… but you… how dare you, you pretentious… _douchebag_!”

“A pretentious… what? Your friend used that word earlier, or some version of it. A shower bag?”

“A douchebag. A douchebag is a bag, for douching. A woman’s pussy. And you are one. And fuck you.”

I’d upset him. I could smell it. So easy to do that. Lancing his propriety as if it were a fat balloon. Dear, Victorian Louis.

“I don’t even think you know what you’re saying,” he said. He opened the passenger door and got in.

“Fuck you,” I said, slamming my own door behind me. “I’m the novelist here. I’m the one with the publication deals. You, at best, are a critic, which you do because you can’t write for shit. Don’t take your suppressed intellectual insecurities out on me.”

Louis said nothing. Anger came off him in waves but he was silent. He clipped his belt.

“Hit a nerve?” I asked him, nastily, hooking my keys out of my pocket. It felt good to say that. Petty, but pleasurable. And he frowned so prettily too, my just reward.

“I can’t talk to you,” he said. “I’ll never understand how you manage to convince anyone to read those romance paperbacks you call novels, nor will I understand how you expect that we’ll ever have a civilized discussion about anything if you insist on dragging it down to this level.”

“We’re not civilized. And I had hardback printing. I still do. Beside, paperbacks are democratic. You don’t have a genuine objection to paperback printing, you’re just being pretentious. Again.”

He folded his arms. “Just take me home, please.”

I actually shoved the keys back into my pocket when he said that, as useless as that was. I suppose it took me by surprise. I don’t know. I also suppose I had to move somehow, hearing a bald-faced assumption like that from him. Even before I’d understood it I knew I couldn’t stand for it.

“Why in the hell should I?” I demanded. “I don’t understand why you’re here in the first place, if all you wanted to do was to snipe at me and flirt with my bandmates all night. You can walk home, since you’re so worried about that damned oil spill. How did you even get here?”

“Of course that’s not why I came. Don’t you understand that I…” Louis paused. He seemed to take a breath. “But I wasn’t flirting.”

“You never are,” I said, fixing him with my best and most practiced glare from beneath the glasses. “But don’t waste your precious time correcting my mistake. Just get out of my car, and leave me the fuck alone.”

“I don’t know what you think flirting is,” he answered. “But I can assure you I wasn’t doing it.”

I said nothing. His earnest attempt to deny it amused me, sure. His charmingly decorous offense - I thought of Sara Crewe again – it was beautiful, and a momentary impulse to laugh washed over me. But it was gone before I really had time to notice it. His manner was just measured enough that I knew it for what it was. He hadn’t even really denied it, not really. He’d only pretended to as part of the expected performance of being Louis. That much was obvious on his face, though I doubted he knew that. I wanted to make him pay for that secret smugness.

He still hadn’t got out of my car, though, and my irrational irritation at that fact overrode any designs I may have formulated.

“I thought told you to get out,” I snarled at him. But Louis was silent now, and his entire demeanor was one of unspoken challenge. Neat, measured, unflappable, he studied his hands, as if both I and the space of the Porsche had become vaguely unsatisfactory. That fucking bastard.

“Get out of my damned car, Louis.”

Nothing. His chin lifted, his eyes met mine, and they stayed. I wondered how he could possibly focus on them, beneath the stupid, modern veneer of the false glasses. But he absolutely could, I had no doubt about that. I blinked. He didn’t. Impudent Goddamned fool, with your insufferably perfect mouth and your aggravatingly perfect posture, why won’t you ever do what I tell you?

“Get the fuck out of my car,” I said. I made my voice low. I put an extremely intentional threat into it. No humans to think about here, I’ll sound – and I mean to sound – like a monster. He didn’t move. But that didn’t matter because I did.

I moved quickly. I pushed him up against the door, hard. His shoulders felt delicate under my hands, weak, though I knew I fooled myself about that. He was as strong as I was, as he’d taken such pains to tell me. I was certainly bruising him, I knew, but just as doubtlessly those bruises would already be healing. The only hope I had was that perhaps, if I were fast enough, I could grip him hard enough to break his bones. I wanted to sorely. Neither his expression, nor the direction of his gaze changed, and that, that was utterly infuriating. I bared my teeth. I tightened my fingers. I pushed him back harder against the passenger door. But his arms had already wound around my waist, under my jacket, and our mouths had already met.

God! Oh God in Heaven, what did you mean by doing this? Did you do it, or had he done it, or had I? Had all of it been leading to this, this vicious, violent crush? His hands curled and folded beneath my jacket, his body seemed to press into mine. Then, the short, sharp shock of his hot blood in my mouth. When he pulled back from me, I saw the blood pooling in his own. I’d yanked his open his tie – what a stupid gesture that was, how ineffectual! – and he seemed so surprised when he noticed. He looked at the tie, then at me, in seeming wonderment, mouth smeared, slackly open. I love you, I love you, I would have said. I didn’t. How dare you make me love you.

“You can’t get out of it like that,” is what I did say. “You can’t just kiss me. You vile, adulterous thing. You do it on purpose. All of it. I wanted to marry you.”

Shock. Then his lips twitched upwards. Red. Wet. Dropping down again to form a perfectly straight line.

“You wanted to own me,” he said. “That’s what you always want. I know you.”

“Not as well as you think you do.”

“Better,” he said. His eyes seemed hot, as if they were blazing. He wouldn’t wipe the blood away. Wouldn’t even touch it. Monstrous creature. The black suit seemed to hang on his nakedness, and he must have known it when he’d dressed. He must have known how frail and breakable his white neck and his white wrists would seem to me.

“Bullshit.”

“No,” he said. “No, it isn’t. I know you better than you know yourself. That’s why you’re here, that’s why you’ve come.”

“You obstreperous prick,” I growled. “You called me first. I ought to teach you a lesson.”

“Ah,” he said. How sweet and how sinful his stained mouth was when it parted to admit this. He seemed moved by it himself, by his own beauty. Lifted his hand, inserted one finger into it, into his mouth.

He didn’t do this to wipe away the blood, though he may have told himself he did. All I saw was one slim finger pressing against his lip, being temporarily consumed by him. It came out bloody. Glistening. He looked at it. So did I. The blood, once again, was utterly tantalizing.

“Louis…” I said. Your mouth, Louis. Your still bloody mouth. Your still bloody stillness, your bloody perfection in every particular. I’ll eviscerate you. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll do it. I will make you submit to me.

“Yes?” he said. He looked as if he were daring me. I wonder, in fact, if he was. When I didn’t answer, when I couldn’t answer, he lifted his hand again, inserted the finger into his mouth again and suckled it clean.

It would have made me harder than steel if it could have. Isn’t that stupid to say? I only write it because I thought of it. Because in that moment, oh God, I wanted to fuck him like a human man. I wanted to fuck him until it made him cry from exhaustion and abandon. I couldn’t, you know that already. I couldn’t. Sometimes I’d have this strange, teasing sensation that I could, but I couldn’t. In general that organ is for decoration only, and ordinarily I can’t bring myself to care because the blood, even this little bit of it, burning my insides, was so, so much richer than any poor and paltry physical sex could be. But right then and there I cared.

Explain that. I couldn’t. But I cared. And God I wanted to, and I gasped at its absence.

Or I gasped at something. I hadn’t quite meant to. It made him look at me. After a moment he took his hand away and corrected his tie. How prim and deliberate that was. How purposeful. How calculated. I knew better than to respond. And yet I did so anyway. I lunged at him and ripped the tie aside and sank my teeth directly into his throat.

He shouted. Glorious. There’s no point to describing it. You know what it was. Hot and sweet, absolute culmination. Everything in this moment. Everything I wanted to hear or to say, in the sound of his voice, in the taste of his body. I’d grabbed him harshly to do it, and he didn’t resist. His cold, tight body fell against mine as he moved. I could contain him in his entirety, he was so light and so fine as to be wholly graspable. His breath was light too, and pulsing and I heard every whisper of it. I pulled open his tie again, opened his collar wider. With my closest hand I was I trying to undo his pants, but the gear stick interfered with me. There was too much junk between us and what I wanted to do. I pulled away. My heart broke over and over as I did it. It was only for moments, but in those moments I thought I would die from longing.

“Get in the back,” I told him.

He did. Without words, he wound himself through the space between the two front seats, falling awkwardly onto the back. I followed him, flinging my glasses away, my skin singing so much already that the leather felt rough, almost painful against it, even through the barrier of my shirt and jacket. I landed on top of him, pawing his body, pulling him out of his clothes, discarding the tie. Licking at him. Kissing him.

He wore something tight and black under the suit paints. Strikingly modern. Not short pants, but not briefs either. Did he buy underwear? Did he care about underwear? But of course he must. He wasn’t incapable, he’d had a whole life here. And I pulled them off him and he didn’t so much allow me to as insist. When I pulled them down, he brought his legs through them gracelessly and almost kicked me in the face. And not with shoes. I hadn’t noticed this while his clothes were on, but they weren’t shoes. They were little black ankle boots. Perfectly polished. I let him keep them on.

That was the only thing I’d let him do. I shoved him down, back against the leather and the metal of the car, the seat seeming to receive him as if he’d been expected. His flanks were hairy. Dark, soft and inviting, his hipbones sharp at this angle, seeming to strain the integrity of his skin.

I wanted to trace them with my hand, but I didn’t. White and compliant, his eyes wide, his lips parted, Louis moaned. And yet I’d touched nothing. He took off his own shirt, his own undershirt. I made him do that, only with my gaze. He looked at me with genuine pleading. Oh, I’ll do it to you, I told him silently. You deserve it, and I’m going to do it. I felt tenderness. I discarded it, along with my jacket. It would only restrict my movements.

When his hands fell aside, I gave no quarter. Without pause, grabbed his thighs and pulled myself towards him, putting my mouth against his ass. He was surprisingly warm there. Sweet. I bit him a little and heard him wince. Sweeter. I licked the blood a little, but not too much. I had nothing else for it, so I wanted him wet. That would be my only kindness. Saliva and blood wouldn’t do everything, but no matter. I didn’t intend to be gentle. When his breath turned ragged and panting, I leaned back and shoved three of my fingers up into him, hard.

He winced again, and he grimaced, and it obviously hurt him. But he pushed into me anyway, wrapping his legs around my back. I wrenched him toward me and bit into his throat again. His skin ruptured easily under my fangs, the wound I’d made not having healed yet, finally healing my own wound, the wound I’d made in myself when I’d pulled away.

Louis gasped. Then he moaned a second time. His legs, and his hands became tighter. I kept fucking him like that, thrusting my fingers in and out of him. He was tighter than I’d imagined, tighter than anything I remembered. And however cold his skin was, inside his body he was hotter than fire. With each subsequent assault, the pulse of his blood became thicker. Darker. More delicious and more violent. A rush of his thoughts. But not really his thoughts, only sensation. Nothing else existed.

Not even his kisses at my face, so insistent and desperate. I felt them eventually, when the curve of one of the pulses brought me gently back into the boundary of my own skin. Soft lips on my face, my own flesh. My hand still inside him, I took temporary pity on him, tearing my mouth away from his neck so I could kiss his mouth. He responded furiously, though he was whimpering, his hands clawing at my back without seeming design. I kissed him again and he grasped at me. His breath was frantic. Such sweetness in that, his pliant body, his honest pleasure. I took my hand from inside of him and pushed his hair away from his face, smearing his own blood over his forehead. His eyes were wide and agonized and hungry. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. How could I have doubted him for a moment?

We stayed, panting like that for minutes. Because I wanted to look at him, because I wanted to see every detail in his face before I finished it. His whiteness, his sharp green eyes. I could kiss him again, I did kiss him again, but it was never enough. As I travelled my hand over his body again, down between his thighs where his bloody sweat mingled with the blood on my hand, I turned my head a little, offering myself.

Yet he resisted.

He didn’t entirely resist. He put his mouth there, rested it there, softly, barely grazing the skin, but he didn’t bite. His blood inside me began to swell in its violent incompleteness, and my hand began to tighten against his thigh of its own will. But I couldn’t speak to insist upon his drinking, and I couldn’t think to figure out what it would mean if I did. I could only stay still waiting for him, I could only feel relief when he began to kiss me there, when his own hand his slowly began to move. Stupid relief. Always so fucking stupid. He ran it over my stomach, ruching up my shirt, slipping me out of it, then brushing his hand over my naked chest.

Sometimes I wonder about that, my smooth chest. Some men, when they are the age I was when I died, have hair there, but I never did, save for the thin trail of tawny blond and its culmination beneath my red jeans. I might have been hairless forever, or perhaps I’d have grown some later if I’d had the chance, but I’ll never know. I wish I didn’t have to wonder that. I wish I hadn’t thought something so stupid as to consider a deficiency in my own body when this was so wonderful. But its wonder seemed to evaporate without my noticing, and I was foreign to myself, under his hand. I began to quiver in my stomach, as he moved. Low down in there. A tiny blossoming feeling. A minor, shivering explosion.

He undid my red jeans one handed now, with some urgency. Alright, I told myself. You want it. The color of lust and blood, and a cut that flatters my body, and I’m attractive to you, I know you feel that. Louis, tell me, darling. Please don’t let me think anything. He tugged them down over my hips, and there was nothing beneath them but my own nakedness, and he seemed fascinated by this too, his hand settling easily against my ass.

He kissed me again then. A hard kiss, his tongue briefly in my mouth, and he caressed me, and the sounds I heard myself begin to make unbidden were enough to tell me that everything up until this point had been a performance. Utter, fucking bastard. His gentleness was a kind of violence to me, worse than anything I’d done to him. He did it knowingly. He did it to hurt. I wanted to shout at him, but the means for doing this seemed so far away from the place I was, from my trembling silence. I think I was thinking this when he pushed me back from him, pressed his hand hard against my body, leaned forward and bit me on the very inside of my thigh.

I cried out. I couldn’t help it. I think it was a quiet cry, really an exhalation, but it was a cry nonetheless. The skin was so taught and sensitive there– right up against my body - that it seemed a startling rupture, too fine a thing to break. His lips closed around the wound and I felt him begin to suck at me, pushing with his hand. He sucked slowly. Tender, yet so greedily insistent that I couldn’t breathe.

I imagined the shaking had become physical. Perhaps I were really trembling, perhaps he’d notice. Yet he didn’t let go. I could feel every movement. I could smell only him, not even my own blood, only the familiar fabric of his body and his cold, yet somehow warm hands against me. His hands grasped my thighs, his fingers pressing into me as if my skin were nothing, as if I were held together by nothing at all. And I cried out again. I couldn’t control that. Nor the third time. I couldn’t stop it. I just had to let him drink, pinned between absolute ecstasy and some kind of searing, jagged terror.

When I whimpered, when I began to shudder and push at him, he kept at it. Killing me. It would be so easy to die like this, I thought. I wouldn’t care, even if it were really death rather than this temporary ecstatic blotting. Perhaps I would have died if I hadn’t remembered to bite at him too, ripping his hand from my thigh and dragging it to my mouth and tearing into his wrist. I ripped open the sensitive flesh of his forearm and sucked from it ravenously, like the drowning man that I was. It was awkward. It was painful. Such a delicious pain. It was the only thing I could reach, and my need for it screamed at me like a black hole. You’re dying, I thought, you’re dying. I think I’d begun to wail at him. But it wasn’t because it was bad! It wasn’t bad! It was glorious. It was overwhelming, joyous wonder. I was just dying.

My response must have startled him regardless, for he broke suddenly, leaned back and looked over me. His mouth was bloody again, careless, and I worried for a moment about my leather interior. I’d need to have it cleaned, and how on earth would I explain that to the garage men? I killed a man, perhaps. This is his memory. Except I hadn’t, because here he was, looking at me.

“Have I hurt you?” he said.

Tenderness. Snapping me back into the present. Just a car. It was just a car. I reached out for him but his face was further from mine than I’d anticipated.

“Yeah,” I said, but I think it was barely audible.

“I’m sorry.”

“No don’t… don’t be sorry. I like…” I said, and then I swallowed, hard, because something was choking me from the inside, “I like for you to hurt me.”

He was so still suddenly that it frightened me. There’d been singing urgency and now I was halfway to dead, his blood lapping at me queasily, my own self a fleshless vacuum, and he froze. I’d be sick if he didn’t move. I’d die honestly. My entire body would collapse from incompletion. I backed up against the door a little, not knowing what to do with this awkward collection of limbs, this hairless, childish imposter. I don’t know how to be quiet, Louis, I would have said, if I could have. Please move. Please don’t make me be quiet.

But then he did move. Louis. Quickly, sliding his arm around my body, sliding his own body against me on the seat, crushing me against his chest. He was strong, I kept forgetting how strong he was and I felt it unquestionably now, and it made me whimper. He kissed me at my temple and I felt his breathing again, hot and loud. He kissed my cheek and I felt the wetness of my own blood. I pressed my nose into the hollow by his collar-bone, against his warm skin, warm now because of me.

I wanted to move too. I swear I did. Even if it were only to lick at the spilled blood on his chest with tiny movements, as if none of it could possibly exist, as if to move too quickly would destroy it. Gentle, because he needed me to be gentle, because he was precious and frail and would break. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything. I was utterly frozen with nausea and fear. How stupid! How stupid when it should have been erotic and animal and unforgiving, when I wanted to fuck him and keep fucking him, when I wanted to follow his blood to its inevitably fatal climax, when I hurt, when I _hurt_ , because I didn’t.

But I couldn’t. Any of the things he might do to me could be no more than suggestions or gestures towards this unknowable, unanswerable doubt, and I couldn’t move. I felt only forever. And forever is terrifying.

Terrifying.

Utterly,

but. “Lestat?” Louis said. And fuck. Fuck. And now my frailty was obvious. I had to look up. His expression, maybe it was a little annoyed. Or perhaps I imagined that. It was certainly searching.

“Don’t look at me like that, Louis,” I said. “I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“Well, I’m alright.”

He shifted then, and his expression changed. I knew some kind of argument was coming. I thought that’s what he was doing. Preparing to lecture me, or something, and I wanted to die. I’ll yell, I told myself. I’m so damned tired and I’m only half satisfied and I don’t even care what you think of me. Just you say it, and I’ll yell at you.

But he didn’t say anything at all. He put one arm all of the way around me and waited. When I didn’t say anything else either, he placed his other hand against my cheek. He moved it, gently. Stroking me. As if I were dog, or a child, or something that needed calming. I wanted so much to let him do this. I wanted so, so much to accept this.

“Don’t,” I said. “It’s not… don’t.”

“Lestat, what’s happening?”

“Nothing’s fucking happening. You’re happening. I don’t know why you have to ruin perfectly nice fucking with this boring psychological bullshit.”

Louis’ hand had stopped moving. “I don’t…” he said. “I apologize.”

“Good for you.”

“Look, would you just…”

“Would you just shut up? Would you just be quiet and be in love with me and not be an ass? Or is that impossible?”

“I don’t…”

“Would you just get out of my fucking car like I told you to?”

Louis blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Are you deaf?”

“No I’m not… I don’t understand what I’ve done.”

“Nothing! Stop touching me like that! Stop badgering me about it! Just go! Fuck!”

“I do love you,” he said. “Of course I love you.” But it’s not of course, I wanted to tell him. It’s never of course, not for anyone. Love is conditional, don’t you know that? Nevertheless, I knew I was supposed to respond more graciously than I did.

“That’s your problem.”

He made a face when I said that. Pained and weary, as if from a sudden, though anticipated wound.

“Yes,” he said, eventually. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Oh, passive-aggressiveness. What an original you are, mon petit. You never fail to surprise me.”

“Oh mon dieu, I give up,” Louis said. I swear he said it with perfect decorum, which was in itself remarkable, given we’d been in the middle of fucking, given he was completely naked but for his boots, given only moments ago he had been deeply in love with me and sucking the blood out of my crotch. As I’ve told you, his manners are not affected by situation or dress. Though as he finished speaking, he sat up abruptly. Then, he began angrily putting his black underpants on. It occurred to me that perhaps his laziness with fashion did not translate to the world as a whole.

But his movements had stung me regardless. “Of course you give up,” I said, as nastily as I was able. “Giving up on me is your raison d'être, you fucking coward. You leave as soon as things get difficult. You always do.”

Louis grimaced. “Frame it as you wish,” he said. “You have asked me to leave, and I shall. I don’t care anymore. You, _you_ are exactly as unsalvageable as you think you are.”

“Don’t hold back,” I said. “Tell me what you really think.”

“Fuck you. That’s what I really think. Fuck you forever, and in exactly none of the ways you want me to.”

“Fuck you!” I said, ineffectually. There had to be a better comeback than that, but I couldn’t think of it.

“Fuck _you_ ,” he said. “You are nothing but a spiteful, petulant child. That simply is your entire character, and every other memory I have of you is clearly little more than romantic delusion. What is wrong with you that you’re like this?”

“Nothing!” I said. “Nothing is wrong with me. Something is wrong with _you_. You said you’d be quiet. You said you’d love me, but you won’t.”

“Loving you is a sickness,” he said. “I wish it had never happened. Your very presence in my life is but a cruel penance from an unfeeling god.”

It took me whole minutes to register what he’d actually said to me. I heard it before I really heard it, if you understand my meaning. He’d pulled up his suit pants, and I’d interpreted the words and translated their meaning in entirety and begun making a series of snappy, if sulky, responses before the impact of his words had made contact with my real understanding.

“Go on then,” I was telling him. “Do what you always do. Leave.”

“I am!”

“Good!” I think I wanted another cigarette. It would suit this, my semi-nakedness, and his, and the fact that things had somehow become overwhelmingly depressing and vile for no reason at all. For no reason except that I was doing it. Because of having, or _being,_ a sickness. The consumption.

“You’ve asked me to!” he reminded me, but I did not want to be reminded.

“Get out, damn it! You don’t need to be impeccably dressed, just go away!”

Louis shot me a look of pure hatred, his familiar, bloody mouth temporarily détourned by a genteel snarl. His naked chest was just short of heaving, something that I found strangely erotic under the circumstances. I was going to do something about that. I was going to leap at him and teach him about looking at me with that kind of expression. Saying what he’d said to me. Leaving me unfinished. I felt myself tensing to do so. I suppose he saw me.

“Don’t you dare,” he hissed. “Just you try it and see where it gets you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, though in truth I found his response a little threatening. “As if you could take me.”

“Don’t sulk.” He’d drawn his shoulders back to their full bearing, made his expression patrician. “Sulking is your least attractive quality. At least have some dignity if you’re going to be a vicious monster.”

Oh, but I wanted to correct him on that. I would have. Lestat would have. The James Bond of Vampires would never have stood for this insubordination, and he wouldn’t do it now. _I_ wouldn’t now, I’d respond, I would teach him whatever lesson was needed to wipe that haughty expression from his face. I opened my mouth to do this, and I swore I would have done it, but instead what happened is that I said, “how dare you!” in a kind of burst and then I cried.

Yes, I cried. I didn’t want to and I didn’t mean to, but I did do it. It seemed to happen without warning and that’s my only explanation for you. I’d have done something else, anything else, but apparently there was nothing I could do but cry. And so I did. And I didn’t want to because I knew what he’d do, curl his lip at it as he always had, but I did. So I put my hands over my face like a child.

Louis made a noise. It was indeterminate. I couldn’t tell if it was comfort or chastisement. I wasn’t going to look at him to find out. I think he’d stopped moving about, however, and he hadn’t got out of the car.

“Please don’t cry,” he said.

“Oh, you can see me?” I snapped. “That’s unprecedented. Maybe the fact that you say you’ve never seen me weep is not in fact because I never do it.”

“Alright,” he said. He didn’t sigh, though I heard the sigh under it. Almost as if he were holding himself back from sighing. That was probably an attempt at kindness. It made me cry harder. It made everything so much worse. I really shouldn’t hit you, I thought. It doesn’t matter if you can hit me back, I just shouldn’t do it. I wished, heartily, that I could completely disappear.

But there was a limit to how long I could continue crying while he watched me in silence. I took my hand away, and saw he was composed. Mildly annoyed, perhaps, but not really troubled. And that was more offensive than anything so far, being mildly annoying, what did he take me for? I wanted to shout it at him.

I didn’t get to. “But what’s the matter?” he said, at last.

“Nothing!” I heard myself say. He looked different when I said it though, and that bothered me. “It’s complicated!” I shouted, attempting to fix it. But it was in no way any better.

Louis bit his lip. Counting to ten, I thought, because there was a long pause, and God help me, I was going to yell again if he didn’t say something soon. He reached forward, tentatively, as if he meant to touch me, but he never completed the movement. The temporary vibrance of his hand as it slipped through the air and then back into his own possession captivated me for a moment, but mostly because it filled me with a rage too great for yelling. I thought about ripping that delicate hand off him.

“Yes,” he said, at last. “That much is obvious.”

“You complicate it,” I said. I had to fight to keep myself from snapping at him. I don’t know how well I did at that. Probably awfully. “I don’t get it, Louis. I don’t understand. I told you I was dangerous and you wouldn’t listen to me.”

Silence.

“It was terrible, what I did to you last week. That should have proven it. And then you do something like that.”

“Ah.”

That sound. It aggravated me. “It’s… it’s not sensible. It’s not sensible, and you are making me inarticulate.”

But Louis’ face had changed. It had seemed to happen as a wrinkle between his eyebrows, but then it was his whole expression. He looked sorry.

“Look,” he said. “Lestat, there have been far more terrible things.”

Yes, very fucking comforting, you utter, utter bastard. But it was indisputably true, and so I was momentarily silent.

“But something like what?” he asked, suddenly, as if he’d just noticed that part of my speech.

“Coming here,” I said. “And then, you know…”

He seemed to search my face for a moment or two, before recognition took him.

“Coming here,” he finished, precisely.

I was almost stunned out of crying. A sex joke? Really? It took me a seeming age to draw myself out of my shock. “Louis!” I said. But he had anticipated my exclamation. He smiled, faintly, smoothing his own hair away from his face before folding his hand into his lap again. The blood on his forehead had dried, and I was sorry he’d done that instead of touching me, because I’d meant to push his hand away. I wanted to be petulant, just as he’d said I was. Instead, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I had bloodstains of my own. Always more bloodstains. “Don’t smile at me. You’re not allowed to smile. I hate you.”

Again, the pause. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry! God!”

“Lestat,” he said. “Please stop shouting. If nothing else, we’ll draw attention to ourselves, and I would like to be fully dressed before that happens.”

“Yes, that’s right, Louis. Care about social propriety. You’re not even human, why do you care what they think of you?”

“Why do you?”

“I don’t,” I said, forcefully. But we both knew that was a lie, so I didn’t continue with it.

He’d moved away from me a little anyway. Doing up his suit pants. I hadn’t realized they were still undone. I folded my arms over my chest. You’re always moving away from me, I wanted to say. Though what I did say was far worse.

“Why can’t you give me a pet-name?”

Of all the impossibly stupid things to have said! It was as if I’d used up my energy for not saying stupid things, because they were coming out of me in a rush now. That wasn’t even an expunged, important confession. It was just stupid. Louis looked up at me.

“Do you want a pet-name?” he asked, as if it were somehow legitimate. He was rummaging in the foot-space now. Looking for his undershirt, apparently, because he picked it up and put it on. But his question was as stupid as mine had been and I couldn’t answer it. The whole conversation was stupid. There was nothing to it besides the fact that I wanted to hear him forgive me, and once I knew that I was too embarrassed to continue.

“What kind of pet-name?” he said, when it became apparent that I was done speaking.

“Any pet-name.” Sulking. I was sulking. Really. My least attractive quality.

“As, for example, any of those charming endearments you use for me?”

“As for example.”

He lapsed into silent thought. I wasn’t sure if I hoped that would be the end of it. I tugged my red jeans on, having to lean back to do it (this is the style now, tight. You know, similar to the eighties) and began to search out the rest of my clothes. Louis, meanwhile, had started to pull his shirt back up over his shoulders. It was such a fashionable shirt, in soft fabric and flattering colors and I hadn’t quite wanted to destroy it in case it discouraged him from this charming foray into stylishness. How beautifully and how carelessly he seemed to dress himself. It didn’t require correction, really, but I told that lie anyway so he would let me touch him.

“Let me do that,” I said, and he took his hands away without comment. I began to button the shirt. But I had to explain it somehow, so I said, “I don’t trust you with nice things.”

“It’s a flannel shirt,” he said. “Lumberjacks wear them to work. I doubt it’s in any danger.”

“You look good in it, you know. You always look good when you bother. There’s no point being so attractive if you never do anything with it.”

“You’d really like me to give you a pet-name?” he said. His voice was very gentle, and not particularly indulgent. I looked him right in the face to be sure of this, and he did not waver.

“No,” I said. “No, of course not.” When I’d dealt with the shirt, I smoothed his hair too. His expression now was one of placid acceptance. Amazing how he could go from so vicious to so docile. It occurred to me that there was something very powerful in strategic submissiveness. “I liked it when you used to call me Monsieur le Rockstar.”

“I like it when you are Monsieur le Rockstar,” he said. “When it wasn’t simply vulgar or pedestrian, your performance tonight was rather engaging.”

I let him go. “You mean sexy, Louis. Use grown-up words.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, in fact I do. Have you forgiven me then, do you think?”

Forgiven _him_? I was putting my own shirt back on then, so I wasn’t looking at him. Oh yes. Yes, what he’d said. I remember it now, but I think that back then I’d forgotten it. Because that was true. It didn’t need to be apologized for.

“Maybe,” I said. “What do I get?”

I’d only just turned back to him when he lifted a hand from his lap. He made a haughty sweeping gesture towards his own body, “you get “this”.”

That’s really what he did. That’s really what he said. I laughed despite myself. I couldn’t help it. The gesture was that ludicrous. I tried to cram the laughter back in, to swallow it so that I wouldn’t break the facade, but it didn’t do any good. It tumbled out of me in an awkward burst, just as my tears had done. Oh my dearest Louis, blundering into the twenty-first century as if by complete happenstance.

Louis gave me a strange expression. Physical. I felt as if he were touching me, though he wasn’t. That made me laugh too. A little harder.

“What?” he said. “What’s funny? Is this too…” Here, he paused. I held my breath a little. “…bootylicious for you? I can see why that would be troubling?”

“Booty…Louis,” I said, or started to say. It went nowhere. I couldn’t stop laughing. I could no more resist it than I could resist living. His face! The effect of his demure, quiet voice emitting these ham-fisted colloquialisms, while sitting upright in my back seat as if nothing was out of the ordinary! I had tears in my eyes again, it was so powerfully wrong, and perhaps they wet my face again, and perhaps I was confused. But then he smiled, so presumably that had been the intended effect.

“Bootylicious,” he said, shaping the word with his mouth as if it were candy. “I heard it in a song. The modern world never fails to offer shifts in language that the observer may…”

But I didn’t hear the point he made. By then I had virtually exploded with laughter, pushing him away from me and collapsing against the door, holding my stomach as if I were in pain. He grinned.

“Wipe that grin off your face,” I said, between gasps. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

My laughter, however, had betrayed this. His grin was unchanged, so I pushed at him and fought it down ineffectually. He caught me. I fell on top of him. Our bodies pressed together then, but it felt chaste, limitless, and impossible for me to act upon.

“You’re an easy mark,” he said. Such a tone. “Do you know that? You write that others find it annoying, but you don’t mention that for some of us it is occasionally satisfying. I wonder if you know.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean,” he said, “that there is occasionally pleasure in the fact that it’s so easy to make you laugh.”

“It allows you to fancy yourself some kind of comedian, I suppose.”

“Perhaps, yes.”

“Get out,” I said. “Get out and get in front, we’re going home.”

He seemed to watch me eagerly. “Do what I tell you,” I insisted, clambering off him. “And that’s a Destiny’s Child song by the way. Beyoncé’s old band. With a Stevie Nicks riff in it and Rob Fusari disputes authorship. It was a very important song.”

“I don’t know who any of those people are.”

I gave him another shove. “Louis, you know who Stevie Nicks is.”

But he only righted himself and opened the door, still smiling. He got out. I followed him. We took our places in the front of the car. The false glasses had landed on my driver’s seat, perfectly unbroken. I put them on again. I didn’t need them for the drive, but I did need them. For the outfit. To the outfit, they were essential.

Louis, meanwhile, had leaned forward, picking up my jacket from the floor of the car. He took my keys from the pocket and handed them to me without comment. I took them. I checked my mirrors. Again, not for the drive, but for the outfit. There was blood all over my face, all over my Master of Puppets shirt, streaking my arms. Bizarre, that I might have simply assimilated that. I might have driven through the streets of Mobile looking like a mass murderer, expecting no-one to notice. I rubbed my hands over my cheeks and some of the blood flaked off.

I was concentrating on this so intently that it took me a moment to realize that Louis’ eyes had met mine in the mirror. He frowned. He’d collected his own jacket too. He took out the folded handkerchief from its breast pocket, the pristine white handkerchief that I had earlier understood as an artful detail. He dealt to the blood on his forehead with it, and then he held it toward me.

“I’ll ruin it,” I said, but Louis didn’t say anything. Neither of us moved for a moment or two.

Then he did. He leaned forward fluidly and took the glasses off me. The handkerchief was bunched in one of his hands as he slipped them over his own eyes. He blinked once, twice, seeming to have to adjust to them. Then he unfolded the handkerchief again and brought it to my cheek.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. But I didn’t move away and he didn’t answer. Slowly, he began to wipe the dried blood from my skin. I sat still. How strange and how artful the false glasses looked on his pointed white face. He looked like exactly what he was, like a time traveler foraying innocently into modern fashion.

“Louis?” I said, again, but he didn’t answer that either. His eyes, neatly framed, stayed focused upon me, and for long enough that I dropped my own simply to avoid looking at him. His touch was light and gentle and it was enough that I felt I might start crying again if I wasn’t careful.

“Would you like me to drive?” he asked.

“Why would I?” I snapped. Viciously. But it had no effect on him at all.

The pressure of the handkerchief was cautious but expert, and Louis’ other hand had curled under my chin to turn my face toward him. Silent and unfazed, he brushed the material over my skin, again and again, stroke by stroke. The blood must be gone by now, though I wouldn’t look in the mirror to see.

“I don’t need anything from you,” I told him. “Stop doing that.” But he ignored me. As if I were his child, I realized. And I suppose that was precisely what he was drawing on. That he had remembered how to be a parent, and he was doing it to me. I so much wanted to be insulted by that. I wanted to be insulted, and to tell him harshly. But I did not.

I think he’d finished then, because he brushed his hand over my cheek without the handkerchief in it. Once. Then twice. This time I let him.

“But you’re alright,” he said. So surprising and so soft that I felt it physically.

I looked up. He was still watching me. Through those Goddamned glasses too. Utterly, utterly stupid. "I..." no. No, don't say things out of surprise or unguardedness.

“Pardon?”

“Why did you do that?” I demanded.

“Do what?” He’d taken the handkerchief away now, slipping it back into the jacket pocket, though he still hadn’t put the jacket on.

“All of it. That. Make stupid jokes. Did you really do that just to make me laugh?”

He looked at me as if I were quite simple. But it wasn’t because I didn’t know why, it was because I wanted it said to me, out loud, in so many words. So I pushed.

“But why?”

“You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said tonight, have you?”

I probably should have said something to that, but I didn’t know if anything I could manage would be true. So I was silent. I may also have been glaring. I can keep this up all night, I thought. How about you?

Louis sighed. “Because I like to.”

“But really, why?”

“Because I like to, as I said. Take it at face value. I wish to demonstrate love for you, because I feel it. That’s not terribly hard to understand, is it?”

It wasn’t. And yet it gave me momentary pause. I’m not sure how long the moment was. Long enough, I suppose. I saw him unrolling the sleeves of the jacket, brushing it, and wondered if perhaps I had been wrong that he didn’t care about dressing. Of course I was wrong. Vain and shallow. Only, deep enough to be embarrassed by it.

“You seem awfully confident that I’ll return it,” I said. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

Louis raised an incredulous eyebrow. He’d put the jacket on now, running his hands under the lapels, neatening them. He shook his hair out again, until it fell about his face like a soft curtain. Finally, he slung one leg over the other, arranging his hands neatly atop his knee. He was a Godard film, a nineteen sixties bichromatic angel. Ravishing. Even the glasses seemed to favor this impression now. But I wasn’t going to be swayed by it.

“Louis,” I said.

He looked back at me. Firm.

“Louis,” I said, again. I was about to tell him off, or to say something nasty, but his wide-eyed, steady gaze stopped me in my tracks. His eyes were so green. The lashes were so fine and so dark. “Louis?”

“Yes, what?”

“I’m completely in love with you. I want to tell you that now in case I never say it again.”

I expected that to have more impact than it did. Louis smiled. But it was an odd smile. Not quite disbelieving, but certainly suspicious.

“Those glasses suit you,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“I love you.”

He smiled differently then. He’d looked down at his hands, but his eyes were sparkling as though they were on fire.

“Lestat,” he said. The quietness in his voice, I thought, masked something much louder. “It’s alright.”

“I’m not, though,” I said, and he looked up, surprised. I’d said the exact opposite, and yet the exact thing, that I had intended to say.

“I’m not…” I began again, but there weren’t good words for it. He was still watching me. I think he was waiting for me to say something else. I turned my face to the windscreen, the wall of the bar faintly illuminated, my hands on the wheel uselessly.

“Everything is…” how even to say this? What possible sense could it make? I felt my lip tremble, as if I actually were an infant, though I didn’t cry again. “I’m… Louis, I’m not alright.”

The pause was long enough that I thought he’d decided to say nothing. It seemed eternal. It seemed empty of sound and full of terror. Seasickness. I thought wildly. I take it back! I wanted to scream, but I didn’t get the chance.

“I know,” Louis said, quietly. Finally. “Of course I know that.”

It’s not of course, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. “Sometimes I think I’ll come to pieces. And I won’t die. I’ll just come apart, and I’ll live like that forever. Not profound, nobody’s prophet, no mysteries revealed to me. Only honest-to-God craziness, forever.”

He nodded, once.

“Louis,” I said. “Louis, I think that’s happening.”

“Alright.”

“Really.”

“Alright.”

“I’m not…”

“It’s alright,” he said. “It’s alright. I know.”

“Don’t you mind?”

“Lestat,” he said. I didn’t understand the tone of his voice. A little appalled, I think. Anyway, I felt ashamed. I looked away from him again. “It’s not the kind of thing a person minds. Even if I did mind, I wouldn’t simply… No. No, of course not.”

“But you…”

“I know.”

“I suppose you knew it…”

“Yes. When I read your book. And I should have responded sooner. That was cowardice, perhaps. Or some other reason.”

“9/11,” I quipped. Then I scowled, which is possibly why he let me get away with the quip. “It’s embarrassing to be so obvious.”

“Only to me, I think.”

I let myself accept that. “Still.”

“You did actually call me a coward in that book, as arrogant as it is that I noticed the two lines in reference to myself.”

Of course you did. “But why are you…” I started to say. I didn’t bother to finish.

“I’ve already answered that,” he said. “Several times.”

“Answer again.”

Louis took his time. I wondered if he were about to sigh, or to say something horrible and a part of me braced myself for it, though of course I needn’t have. It was far more boring than that, what actually happened.

“Because,” he said, “love itself is not enough. It isn’t enough for anybody, not for eternity.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean to say that if we formalize the process, as we are doing, that also means that it can formally conclude, doesn’t it? That if we “break up”, as they call it, within the context of having an actual relationship, one that we admit to existing in terms of labor and cohabitation, one that is explicit and practical, and bereft of all this talk of fate, or irreparability, or any of the ways I’ve found myself framing it in previous… engagements…, well then we’ve admitted that we’re just not terribly well suited to each other and that it’s best if we don’t delude ourselves into keeping company, in this romantic sense. With such an end-point in mind… if it can end, as you see, it does seem pertinent to intentionally work against that. And that is why I am doing these things, does that make sense to you?”

I had not anticipated an answer of that length or particularity. I may have spluttered a little. “But… what? That’s not… how on earth is that reassuring? You’re telling me you’re anticipating that we break up for good? That will never happen, and besides it’s just not… Give me my glasses back.”

He didn’t. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve thought about this long and hard this past week. I’ve never ‘dated’ anyone this way before, and I rather like it. And I especially like that it’s you, so it’s all or nothing, including, if I absolutely must, honest-to-god craziness.”

“Please don’t… please don’t make… I can say that, but you can’t.”

He frowned. Not angrily, but sympathetically, as if thinking of something very tragic. “I’m sorry, monsieur.”

For a moment, I felt safe, and comforted, as if his words were a blanket around my nauseous fear. Only for a moment though. “Where’s all the guilt?” I demanded.

“It’s gone.”

“That’s bullshit, Louis. Your entire soul is built from it, your entire being. That doesn’t just disappear.”

“No, it probably doesn’t,” he said, “But as you’d say, so what? This, with you, it’s interesting. We haven’t done it before and that in itself… there’s so much time, and everything is so familiar and yet… aren’t you interested?”

“Oh, the romance.” I said this sarcastically but not, I thought, sarcastically enough.

Louis ignored me. He seemed to be concentrating on something outside the car again, and I wondered what he was thinking. I might have asked, but instead I turned the ignition and slipped the stick back into reverse. I applied a gentle pressure, and the Porsche began to move out of its park.

“When I say we haven’t done it…” he said, or began to say.

“I know what you meant,” I snapped. “I don’t like this new side of you. You’re not allowed to make sex jokes. It doesn’t become you.”

“I suppose you’ll idealize me forever. Keep me pressed between the pages of some forgotten book, like some forgotten flower.”

So beautifully poetic that I almost sighed. So like him. “Yes,” I said. Sharply. I thought I saw him smirk.

“Shall I take you home?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“I meant the flat.”

“I know that.”

“No post-structuralist critique?” I asked him, a little meanly.

“No,” he said. “Perhaps afterwards.”

“I told you I didn’t want you to do that.”

“Ah yes, but you love me now, apparently, so perhaps you’ll indulge me in it.”

“I've loved you forever,” I said. “Don’t you read?”

Perhaps you’ve forgotten what happened then. I’ll remind you of it. We went to bed together. We went to bed together and did not emerge for a full week. Constant, degenerate fucking, as I believe Louis described it, as I recall I have previously relayed to you. Absolutely wonderful. And if I’ve emphasized the horrible here, it’s only because I don’t like to remember that without qualification. Remember, Lestat, I tell myself, because this writing, now, is a way of telling myself, remember it ended badly. Don’t allow yourself to get lost in nostalgia.

Aren’t you listening? Don’t remember. Don’t remember his sweet, flushed face, his nose pressed against yours. Don’t remember that he’d drowse after climax, always, that once he had wanted to watch television, any television, or that he had said, wearing only a pair of my jeans and watching me feed the dog, “I love you for this. All of your secret tenderness. You’re better than you know,” before he lead me back to the bedroom by my hand as if by accident. Don’t remember that he had indulgently listened while I had read him little bits out of magazines, had read to me too, treating with utter seriousness the idea that Britney Spears had a Close Personal Friend so concerned for her well-being they had to tell everything to _Who Weekly_ until I’d laughed and laughed at how stupid it all was that anyone would care that much about fame, or that we’d then traded poems and stories, each of us drawing from memory, each one a little romance, a little gift, “my river runs to thee,” one of us had said, and it had. Especially, don’t remember all of those little kisses, each one a blanket-stitch between me and this world, knitting us together, though really, really we were utterly out of time. No lights on, not even moonlight, just darkness, kissing each other by the light of his iridescent eyes. Our hands had woven together and it had seemed a very marvel, how slowly, how meaningfully we could touch. Don’t remember that.

Not without qualification, at least.

Oh yes. It was honest-to-God, utterly unstoppable romantic fucking. We fucked as if we had forgotten how to do anything that wasn’t each other. Either my heart would break or my body would, but I never imagined that both of them would hold. Yet hold they did. For one whole week, they withstood everything. They held long enough for me to make promises. I had to. He loved me with such faith and such insistence that I may almost have believed it. I couldn’t only kiss him. Some of the time, I had to speak.

But then I shoved him out of bed, and that was the very beginning and the most minor of all of the terrible things that I would do to him within the bonds of that strange marriage.

Well, he should have anticipated it. He absolutely should have known it was coming. I warned him. It isn’t my fault that he didn’t believe me. I lied to him again and again, but I didn’t lie about that, and if he really did know me as he claimed to do, he would have known the difference. I told him the truth I should have told to you, the truth I should have told to Nicki, the truth I should have told to Robert Palmer and every single one of those girls and boys I brought into my room and sucked the life out of. I told them all that someone would love them forever, and what a lie that was. But the truth I told to Louis then must surely forgive it.

Except it doesn’t, does it? When I began this chapter, I offered you one of the sweetest, most tender moments in my memory, a recollection that was wholly precious and wholly my own, and yet I’ve shown it to you as if it were nothing at all. I think you understand me well enough to know why I did that, exhibitionist I, the consumptive disease, possessing the original sin of wanting to be loved in return. I showed you for no other reason than that I thought you would like it. And if you understand that, then you know precisely why nothing is forgiven.

Because I can’t stop this, don’t you see? I only know how to be a vampire, and so, so much worse than that. I only know how to be a monster. Whoever that was, crying when Nicki fucked him, he cried because no other person would ever see that intimacy, that private communion, that Nicki and I possessed. He didn’t do it for show. I, however, did. I asked for you to love me. Oh, yes. I know now that I was probably observed.

Oh, yes. Somebody saw me. Think about that. Picture it. I was mortal then, at that moment with Nicki. Living and breathing and illiterate and human. Shortly afterwards I wasn’t anymore. That wasn’t an accident. Nothing was personal, or private. Everything _was_ a stage performance, and we were merely actors, and somebody was watching us even before you were, and that is always how it was going to be. Yes, you, darling. You, looking at me now. You, who watched every single thing I did with Louis. I don’t blame you. I told you. I wanted to tell you. And everybody likes to look at monsters. Isn’t it lucky that I am one?

Oh, I know. You’re upset with me. You think I’ve been stringing you along, lying to you as I did to everyone else. Forever this, and forever that, and look over here while you forget the promise I made you. But you’re wrong. You’re wrong because I have told you. You know exactly what the therapist told me about myself. You know exactly what I said in response that made me break the glasses. You only didn’t know that you knew. So think carefully, my love, for this is the part you need to know. It’s the part that Judy forgot to talk about. The part where, when you ask to be loved, and somebody _really_ loves you, the conviction it takes them to do it should warn you that you are seldom the agent to choose the manner in which you will be loved. Love is forever sometimes, rest assured. Sometimes love, like monsters, is dangerous.

I warned him. “I’m not good, Louis,” I had said, that very night. And I had cried again, and he had put his arms around me, and he had kissed me, and kissed me, and said, “Oh, monsieur. Oh monsieur, I know.”

Poor Katherine. He didn’t know it then, but he was lying.

 

 


	13. You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emails, in which Louis reveals some of his earnest, hippie-ish music taste, and some of his feelings. Lestat gripes, and edits his novel.

You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: ??

Not meaning to rush you, darling.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: ??

I’ll need an hour or so more. Though I will tell you that I appreciate your not capitalizing “god” in my dialogue.

L.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: ??

I know how you enjoy your little existential rebellions.

Listen, I’ll have to talk to you about the second part before I send it to you. It’s difficult, as you may have anticipated, and I think we should discuss it in person.

De baisers,  
Lestat

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: ??

Do you really think that’s necessary?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

Let me be honest: it’s taken shape to be far less about what I did to you and far more about how you were about it. And it’s not kind. To the extent that it’s begun to leave a bad taste in my mouth for having written it.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

Yes, I imagine it has. But you are writing a novel, not courting me.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

Oh, you’re hilarious. But I mean it. Abject depression isn’t very pretty, not even on someone as pretty as you, and I haven’t painted a flattering portrait. More to the point, I don’t think I want to.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

I am less interested in a flattering portrait than I am a good novel. But we’ll discuss the editing of the second part when we come to it.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

If you say so.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

I do say so. Leave me alone and let me work.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

Oh, mon Dieu. May He forgive me my vain, foolish attempt at basic decency.

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

Lestat,

I have attached my minor criticisms and structural advice. I have found, after several hours of contemplation, that I must also pen (or type) this message to you in addendum. It is against my better judgment, as is any confession to you at any time, yet my conscience insists it must be done, and here it is:

I apologize that you have so far found my notes cold. It is not inaccurate of you to think this, as they are indeed deliberately so. I have done it to retain a necessary distance, as I am sure you understand. It is not done to cause you pain, nor is it done because I never loved you, as you erroneously assume. You are correct that the recollection of this past year is not easy for either of us, and that it is less so for me. My warmth, as I am sure you are now laughing over in heady irony, is as conditional as my love and my refusal of consent allegedly are by your telling of it.

All of this said, please understand that I did love you. It is only that I have left you, and I must work to maintain that absence in manner and tone. I would simply refuse to read for you at all, but I believe the work is good enough that it deserves my attention (please do take this to heart. I simply wouldn’t bother with it if I didn’t feel so, and I am sure, from reading your efforts thus far, that you have enough information about me to know that that is entirely the truth of things). I have also begun to suspect that you may not complete the novel without my participation. The situation is admittedly complicated.

But I know you understand that sometimes one is required to make intellectual decisions that are hard for the heart to follow. This is one of the conditions of free will, the knowledge that the part of us that makes such (as they say) hard calls is also our own self, and not only our bestial impulses. It has occurred to me to wonder if this condition is not far more difficult for you than it ever was for me, and in those moments of wondering, I occasionally wish that I could cushion you from this blow without sacrificing my own integrity or body to do it. Even if we both know that that is impossible.

Still, I want you to know that I do remember that time. I hesitate to tell you this, for all of the reasons I have so far mentioned, but I consider that I must, since I have my own homesickness, and you leave out all of the parts about your own self. I admire you for doing so in the context of your narrative, but I beg they be corrected, at least a little, at least in your own thoughts, with my recollections here. Your nose pressed against mine too, Monsieur, and your own face was flushed. And it was you who recounted the poem you mention, and I do have that particular weakness, for hearing soft words from somebody very beautiful, as you were. You may call me your rarified aesthete if you wish, I know it is a little true. Of course I remember that. I’d like you to remember it too, for your own sake.

Something you may have forgotten – perhaps you have simply chosen not to include it – but do you recall that that week was the only time you would allow me to listen to Bob Dylan in your presence? I think the conversation evolved from my discussion of Joan Baez’s ‘Diamonds and Rust’ - “my poetry was lousy, you said,” is the line, I believe, that made me want to tell you about it. I did it solely to make you laugh, but you leapt up and fetched your computer, and made me play it for you. I did. From there, I had talked about Dylan, and from there his album Blood on the Tracks, which is not (as I understand) about his relationship with Baez, but about a relationship nonetheless. You let me listen to it, and tell you about it – insisted, in fact - when usually you never will. “I want to know all about you, darling,” you had said. “Tell me everything.”

So I found the songs individually, under your direction. I played them in the order of the album. You listened to each one intently, without speaking, until the last strains of ‘Buckets of Rain’ had receded, and then you looked directly at me, your own eyes bluer than robin’s eggs could ever be, and impish and twinkling, and your own face utterly beautiful, you said, as I recall, that the record was self-involved and bloated and needed significant editing. ‘Idiot Wind’ was “maybe okay” but it still could have lost “about four verses. Mon Dieu!” and ‘Shelter from the Storm,’ you conceded you liked but “what is all that cryptic crap about the deputy and the preacher, Louis? No wonder you like it.”

The irony of it being you, The Vampire Lestat, to make these comments was not lost on me. I laughed, and I teased you about it, in that cautious way that you would allow me to do in that strange time. Then I said that perhaps the Jack of Hearts, perhaps Dylan’s shifting persona in general, was closer to you than you realized, and that the album was a work of modest genius. You tossed your hair and told me, “listen, Lily. Bob Dylan is, and has always been overrated. I, at least, have consistently rated in line with my actual quality.”

I had to kiss you then. I did it impulsively and messily and it seemed to startle you. I had not realized it would be so unexpected, and I almost apologized. But then you grinned your irrepressible grin and said, “Louis! You’re so bold now. Where does all this boldness come from?”  
“It’s Freudian,” I said. “The cork has slipped out, and now I’m irredeemable, like a character in a Georges Bataille story.”

It was curious to me, as I had meant it as a joke, but you responded to this as if it made you genuinely sad. “Oh, mon petit,” you said. “Don’t be depressing on our honeymoon.”  
“Is that what you call it?” I had asked you, in wonder, and you had indignantly said, “yes,” as if it were terribly rude of me not to know. I did apologize then, though I did that teasingly too, and you glared at me. I couldn’t tell if you were serious.

“It’s a week in the tropics,” you’d announced, imperiously, as if instruction. “The tropics of fucking. It’s Henry Miller all over again.”  
“Did you enjoy Miller?” I asked you. “Because I…”  
“Never bothered,” you said, dismissively. “What the fuck is the point of all that middle-century fiction? I read the back, that’s enough.”  
“I honestly think you’d approve,” I had said. I honestly did. Later in the year, if you remember, I bought you one or two volumes. Miller is not much to my taste (with the uncomfortable exception of Quiet Days in Clichy – though I did not like the story, I must acknowledge the craft), but I assume he was to yours, as you read them voraciously. It didn’t surprise me. That was why I chose the gift, after all; you are, I think, exactly as impetuous and living and sensorial as Miller himself would have liked to be.

As such, I think you will never know how well I recall those fleeting moments. I think that knowledge is outside of your imagining, in which you are the center of some particular universe, the only creature to genuinely think or feel. But not everything is done by your reasoning or at your direction. Some things are done by others for their own wants. I did love you, of course, and that was my choice. But really, it was only a concrete expression of the centuries during which I always had. I wondered then if it was so for you too, since “tell me about when you were a child,” you had said, rolling onto your back and looking up at me. “Did you pray very hard? Didn’t you sing for your choir?”

“Yes, I did,” I told you, and you smiled. It was a lovely smile, simple and ample and quite unaffected.  
“You had that rosary around your bedpost,” you said. “Such a proper Catholic. That’s why you were trying to get someone to kill you, so you wouldn’t commit a mortal sin. You leave them all for me.”  
“It’s not a sin,” I had said to you, as gently as I could, as I sensed it had become more serious than you let on. “Isn’t that what you tell me?”  
“I tell you a lot of things,” you said. “My darling little choir boy, you’re so faithful. Do you always believe everything I say?”  
“Yes,” I told you. I meant it.  
“Then you don’t regret anything?” you asked me.

If I’m not sure about that any longer, it doesn't mean I wasn't sure about it then. It was easy to be sure, the way you smiled.  
“No,” I said. “I do not.”

Louis.

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

Louis,

For the record, there are two Bob Dylan songs I like: ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ and ‘Just Like A Woman’. Listen to the second if you haven’t already. The music is God-awful, but I can only pray that the lyrics strike a necessary chord.

In the interests of full disclosure, lately I have some passing affection for ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again’ for obvious reasons, as well as the song ‘Mississippi’ for reasons even more obvious than that. But that’s it. For the most part, to employ the colloquial parlance, as you would say, Dylan sucks and sucks hard.

Thank you for the notes,

Don’t think twice (and et cetera).

 

From: johnharmon@jmail.com  
To: dionysus@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

What about ‘Sara’?

 

From: dionysus@jmail.com  
To: johnharmon@jmail.com  
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ??

Touché.


End file.
